Independence Tri Race Report

The indi-tri was a sucess! I took 2nd in my age group out of 27 and i was 13th overall out of 269. my overall time was 1:00:22. I felt like my pre- race prep yesterday went better than it usually does. I need to remember that and do it that way all the time! Getting up at 4 this morning to go race was rough. I was tired during the drive and a deer jumped out in front of my car. luckily i missed him but that woke me up! I made it to the race in time to setup my stuff in transition but then i got kicked out and i had to put my wetsuit on during the athlete meeting. Would have been nice to have more time but oh well. I wasn't nervous but i didn't really have that im going to do well feeling either but i did end racing a good race.

The swim was in a decent lake. Hard sharp rocks around the shoreline which is never fun to enter/exit on. The temp wasn't painfully cold although it wasn't warm. Happy to have the wetsuit on! Some gross weeds but overall the water wasn't bad. I used my yellow lens open water goggles and i have to say they were a huge sucess. the yellow lenses really help in the foggy, overcast morning light. I am thinking about shortening my hair because it is just getting hard to tuck it all into a swimcap lately. A wave went off in front of me by 3 minutes but i picked off most of the swimmer from it. It wasn't my best or easiest swim because I was getting pulled downstream by the current and to work back around the buoys costing me some time. also since I had to go around so many swimmers I was like jockeying for position at times. there were people doing breaststroke and even backstroke. I know you can legally swim any stroke that advances you but sometimes it would be nice if they had an optional wave at the end for people that struggle with swimming. It would probably make them and the other racers all more comfortable. The run to the transition area seemed really long. Had a little trouble getting my wetsuit off over my timing chip. The bike mount started with an immediate uphill which wasn't the greatest feeling. The rest of the bike course was rolling hills. I picked off a ton of people on the bike. Another challenge were a lot of people were not riding as far to the ride as they could and they were in a blocking position. I was yelling on your left frequently. The mens waves went off after the womens waves and i was passed by 3 guys on the bike. But no women. So i knew I was doing well. No problems during T2. My legs hurt when i started the run and it took a while for them to come back but i kept pushing because with a short race like this there is no time to wait for your legs to come back. During the course of the run i got passed by 3 more guys and a couple of girls but i was going as hard as i could. Those 3 guys were in front of me at the finish and the crowd was going nuts as i was sprinting trying to catch them. sadly i did not but i did try! I just thought it was funny as the crowd was yelling for me to beat the guys!

Here are my splits:

swim: 9:31 - this included the run (uphill) to transition and it was pretty far. all of the swim times seemed high I think it was because of the current. I know i had to reset myself to the 1st buoy I was getting pulled downstream.

T1 - 1:15

Bike - 32:55 - rolling hill course - although the first hill coming directly out of transition was tough to get going on

T2 - .51

Run - 15.47

Bad news - my knee is killing me! I took ice and used it on the drive home and iced it today when possible. I have an art session tomorrow so hopefully between that and the taper week it will get back on track enough for eagleman! I tried a new method of kinesio taping today too.

The girl that took first beat me by 21 seconds!!!!! If i hit exactly on the hour like i wanted to i would have won! i shouldn't have taken the time to put those damn socks on!!! Actually she beat me on the run. I checked all of her splits and i was faster then her on everything except the run. But with the limit on my run training over the winter because of the surgery. That is probably my weakest discipline right now. But it will get better. I actually used to be able to run decently fast back in the day so hopefully it will come back.

That being said I'm happy with how I did. Of course I've got the post race maybe i could have swam/biked/ran just a little faster thoughts going through my head. But overall I raced a very good race. I didnt have race wheels or anything like that on my bike for this race but i am thinking im going to have to get a set of my own and soon.

I didn't take my garmin with me because i didn't want to waste time playing with it in such a short race but maybe it would have helped keep me on track better and perhaps I could have gone just a little faster! I did take some water on the bike but didn't drink much of it. I didn't take any water on the run even though i wanted it just because i didn't want to take the time. I downed a lot of it after the race!

Just have some recovery stuff on the workout schedule for tomorrow. Happy to get a good race like this in before eagleman!