Race Report Time. This weekend was the Luray International Triathlon. 1500 meter swim, 25 mile bike, 6.2 mile run. I'll start off by saying that training is going pretty poorly. Just hard to get back into the game without an A race to shoot for. I'm still hitting the pool and treadmill 3-5 times a week, but only once or twice on the bike a week. Still though, I had already paid for the race two months ago, and I wasn't doing anything this weekend anyhow.
Started off with a nice little treat that has come with my triathlon career: another night of camping. After finishing up clinic, changed into some comfy jeans, and headed out to Shenandoah National Park. Rolled into the park around 7:15 after stopping at a quaint road side joint for a Buffalo burger. Made camp, lit a small fire, which quickly went out, and then hit the sack pretty early. Well tried to hit the sack. As any one who owns a tent can tell you, peace and quiet, ironically, is something hard to come by in these public campsites these days. Between the baby crying, the couple snoring, and the party of bikers, I managed to catch a couple of winks.
Up at 4:45 to break camp and headed out of the park at around 5:15. Almost hit three deer at three different spots on the way to the race. Stopped off for a quick gas station coffee, Egg sandwich chased with some Red Bull and Ibuprofen. Yum. Pulled into the race site at about 6:15. Luckily, this time there was nice parking and I didn't have to tread through a bunch of tall grass to transition. Setup went pretty smoothly, except for the volunteers insisting I was a 46 year old age grouper. After some confusion, they corrected some minor errors and find my right packet. Maybe Im missing something, but it takes me like 3 minutes to setup transition. I see people milling around the whole morning in there; not so sure what the fuss is about. After taking care of some business in the potty, headed down to the beach to get some warm up swimming in.
Water temp was a nice 80 so no wetsuit again. Swim was in a moderate sized...pond....I guessed would be a good term. Felt great to get in the water and swim as always; Ive come a long ways since last year. I was in wave 2, and I situated myself in the middle on the right. Gun goes off, and instead of letting people go, I immediately started hammering it. I was looking for a good pair of legs to follow, and I quickly settled in behind someone who appeared to be moving fast. Didn't even really site much as I was in a crowd and I figured we surely must be all going the right way. The course was the most interesting shape, I cant even begin to describe it. Water was fugly as anything, but I didn't mind as I just concentrated on my drafting. Felt like I was keeping pace pretty fast despite some good elbows this time. Still no kicks to the face. Even though I felt like I was going hard, I came out of the water around 31:00. I had hoped to be less than 30, so this was not to my liken.
Along the beach, up some stairs, and into transition I went. Put socks on during this transition to see if that made things a little faster overall, and out onto the bike. From the times last year, I was hoping to ride less than 1:20. Took the first five minutes to hydrate with some of my Infinite solution, and get my heart rate under control. After that, put the hammer down as hard as I could. The course was rolling again like Culpeper, but the hills were of a higher grade. One neat thing was a good downhill portion. Max speed was 44 mph going down. I seemed to be making it through the course pretty well as I was coming into the last portion of the first loop. I made a 90 degree left turn, and saw a wonderful flat stretch of road ahead. I through "great, I'll just keep it at 22 mph until the 2nd loop." But, as I started along, it was getting insanely hard to keep my pace. As I looked down and saw my pace settling down to 15, I realized I was on a false flat, an area of the road where it appears flat, or even downhill, but is actually slightly uphill. From the people around me, I could tell I wasnt the only one suprised. After an annoying few miles, I made the turn into the second loop and enjoyed the aforementioned downhill again. Looking at my comp, it showed me to be at 10.1 miles in 30 minutes, and so I was feeling confident with the pace. Shortly after coming out of the downhill section, and moving into some tiny rollers, I was passed by a 5-6 person PACK of riders, several of which were in my age group. Now, Im not talking a long line of well spaced riders; these guys were clearly drafting. Whats more, behind them were even more people trying to catch up to get in the pack. Now, I have never attempted to cheat or bend the rules in this sport before, but I also wasnt prepared to be the only guy NOT drafting in my group. So I hopped on board and rode with the pack through most of the second loop. Things were going great until the false flat section, when I suddenly had no pedaling resistance. Look down and I had dropped my chain off the ring. Tried to fix it riding, but no avail. Had to dismount, rechain and back on. Unfortunately, the peloton of my age group had gone roaring off this point. Was back on in about 20 seconds, finished the second loop, and headed back towards transition. There was one last hill on the way in that was pretty brutal. When I finally made it in, I had something around 1:22; I think it was the last hill that put me off the mark.
Into the shoes quickly, number and hat on, and off I went for the run. Caught up to some of my age groupers and settled in for the first mile. Felt great. First split was about 7:45. Some good bumps in the run course. Kept dousing myself with water to keep cool in the rising temps. Second split was also about 7:40. Then all of sudden, I hit the wall. Maybe it was the hills, maybe it was the fact I was running without anyone around me for a bit, but I just had no energy. Had to walk for about 15 seconds up a hill, a first for me. Finished the first loop at a depressing 25:00 ish. Headed back out for the second loop. Again feeling better on the first mile out, back up to pace at around 7:40. But then again, coming back, died on the hill and had to walk another 15 seconds through the water station. Coming into the end, was way too tired to give any kick and crossed the line with a run of roughly 52:30. I had hoped to be less than 50:00 for this race.
All in all, ran a disappointing 2:52 ish time. That puts me right around 195 out of 600 again. I imagine I will be just back of middle for my age group again.
Followed that up with a lovely, and smelly, three hour drive back to home, where my wife and I marveled over just how ugly the race T-shirt was.
This was a good learning experience for me. I have not been training anywhere near as diligently as before the Ironman and its surely showing in my racing. That being said, I have decided to call it a year for racing. This way I can save money, and put more time into quality training for next year. Ive built the endurance, now I just need to bring the speed. Currently, Im ranked 8th out of 300 for my age group in VA, but most of that is because Ive done so many races. Next year, hopefully I will earn those marks from speed and not for just showing up. I guess showing up though is worth something, so Im still happy.
When I get the official results and photos, will post. For now, time to get some quality training in my life, starting with quality sleep.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment