Lakefront Days Triathlon Race Report

Or, "It's All About the Run.  Mostly"


I did it.  I finished the triathlon.  And, I'm happy with how it went.  I won't go into my expectations again, but if you need a refresher, check the previous post.  I will say that the weather was unexpected—I was assuming warm and humid, but we got cool and rainy.  That's fine by me, but I could have gone faster had I not been unnecessarily weighed down by sunscreen.  :)

Pre-Race
Running is a simple sport.  You need shoes, shirt, shorts, socks, maybe a watch, maybe some Gu if it's a longer race, and a race number.  Then you're good to go.  Triathlon is not a simple sport.  Exhibit A:

That's all my race gear on my living room floor the night before the race.  Not included, of course, is my trusty bicycle, Roy.

We loaded up the car…early…and left.  How early?  Well, the following photo was taken outdoors:

Katie is wondering why we're loading up before dawn

We arrived at Cleary Lake as transition opened at 6am, and grabbed some spots on the end of the rack.  Ariel (doing her first triathlon too), showed up not too long after we did, and brought a bright orange towel to tie on the rack to help us spot it when running through transition later.  I set my transition area up using an old pink bath mat that my mom gave me when I moved to MN.  I figured that if it works in a bathroom with wet feet, why won't it work outdoors with wet feet?

Katie's transition spot on the left, mine on the right.

The racks look pretty roomy there, but we would compress later when more people needed to rack their bikes.  Here's my little spot:

Pretty gold swimcap, eh?

We got bodymarked, then checked out the swim course now that the buoys were there:

We started at the close buoy, then swam out to the far one, then came back the other side

I'll admit that seeing the swim course actually made it less intimidating than I was expecting.  Getting an idea for how far apart the buoys were made it seem like a pretty doable distance.  They were also out "mowing" the weeds in the lake.  A welcome sight, but it still ended up being pretty weedy.

I warmed up with a little bike ride, some running, then some swimming.  Before heading to the beach, Katie and I snapped a photo:

I'm apparently REALLY excited

I swam for a bout 5-10 minutes to get warmed up and to try swimming in just the tri suit for the first time.  As it turned out, the water temperature was 80°F, so it was not a wetsuit-legal race.  I could have still worn my wetsuit, but then my results wouldn't count.  I was ok with being slower, and knew that I could safely complete the distance, and thus went sans wetsuit.

The Swim

I started with "Men: 29 and Under"3 minutes after the first wave (the elites) started.  While waiting for the gun, I noticed two people standing in front of me wearing blue jeans.  Yes, blue jeans (they were jean shorts).  I made a mental note that I considered them costumed runners and knew I had to beat them.

The gun went off and we started.  I hung back a bit to let the others get a head and give myself a bit of room.  I knew it was important to take the swim EASY, and Steve reminded me of this.  The first 50 meters were a little tough because I wasn't thinking about my swimming form.  Once I realized that "hey, I don't need to lift my head all the way out of the water to breathe", things became much easier.  I didn't swim exactly straight, and there were two guys in front of me for most of the swim.  One of them was doing sidestroke, the other backstroke.  It was tough to get by them, and they moved all over the place.  I will admit though that at one point I looked where I was going, "corrected" my path, but ended up cutting laterally all the way to the rope diving the course.  Whoops.

For the most part, there wasn't much physical contact between me and others.  After I reached the turnaround, I could start to see the hot pink swim caps of the next wave heading out to the turnaround.  For some reason, I just assumed that whenever I saw a pink swim cap, they'd be on the other side of the rope.  At one point, I turned and saw a pink cap REALLY close to me.  I thought I had drifted across the rope somehow into oncoming traffic, and I was a bit shocked.  I think the woman thought she had hit me or noticed that I jumped a bit, and she actually apologized right there.  (She didn't do anything wrong—it was all me).

When my hand hit the bottom, I knew I had made it, so I stood up and ran out of the water and up to transition.

Swim Time: 12'29"

T1

It started to rain during the swim, so I was surprised by the rain when I got out of the water.  I made 2 split second decisions in transition.  The first was to put my bath mat on top of my bag.  This was a good decision because it kept my clothes dry for after the race.  The second decision was not so good.  I waffled over taking my sunglasses because it was so cloudy, and ended up leaving them behind.  This would be severely problematic later.

T1 Time: 2'09"

The Bike

Roy and I headed out on the bike course, and I knew right away that not having sunglasses was a mistake.  The water coming off my front tire was going right into my eyes, so I kinda had to quint for most of the bike ride.  Not terrible, but not ideal either.

I passed a few people, but mostly got passed by people.  Katie and Katie (another friend of ours doing the tri), passed me only a couple miles into the ride.  I had some mechanical issues where my chain wouldn't go on the big cog up front, so I was stuck on the middle one for a while.  Once I got it up on the big cog, I was worried I wouldn't be able to get it back up there, so I left it on the big one for a while.  This made some of the uphills tougher than they needed to be.  I eventually tried going down to the middle one, then back up to the big one, and all was good.

Little Rant: When I pass people, I find it is courteous to announce that I'm doing so.  A simple phrase like "On the left" or "Left" works fine.  On the course, only 1 other person announced they were passing me.  He was on a road bike with fenders and a back rack, but still had the decency to announce his passing.  No one on the fancy bikes announced anything, and they mostly passed too closely.  Not cool.

I felt good for the ride, and didn't go too hard.  I may also have been humming to the tune of Cwm Rhondda for most of the ride...  I finished refreshed and ready to go on the run.

Bike Time: 51'07"  (15.85 mph—surprised me too!)

T2

I was very quick with this.  Drop Roy off, pick up my race number, then go.

T2 Time: 0'31"

The Run

Here's where the racing started for me.  I went out at a pace a little harder than I thought I could, but wanted to keep it up for as long as possible.  One guy passed me toward the beginning, but other than that I only passed people.  1.5 miles in, I came across Katie and Katie, and greeted them.  They were pushing each other on the run.

I kept my pace going, and was doing great without my watch.  About 200m from the finish, I saw one of the guys in jean shorts!  All of a sudden my inner dialogue went to "Don't get beat by costumed runners, don't get beat by costumed runners…"  I started my kick then and there.  I thought it may have been too early, but I held him off easily and crossed the line.

Run Time: 22'43"

Total Time: 1:28:57

Post Race

I waited with Ariel's fiancé Brian, David, and David's girlfriend Cia who all were great spectators out in the cool rain.  Just a few minutes after I finished, Katie came by, then my Katie came by right after he. My Katie looked like she had a tough run, but she had a good race.  We grabbed some food (including fantastic hot dogs), and waited for Ariel.  She came by just a little while later, and finished strong AND beat her goal time of 2 hours by a couple minutes.  Great job Ariel!

Some Analysis

Overall: 128 out of 293

Men: 80 out of 145

Men 20-24: 6 out of 10

So, I was for the most part middle of the pack.  I'm pleased with how the race went, and considering I had the 2nd slowest swim and bike in my age group, middle of the pack is ok with me.

However, the run was something else entirely.  Over the 3.3 mile course, I finished in 22'43".  That's a pace of 6'54" per mile.  6'54" per mile!  My 5k PR was at a pace of 7'06' per mile, so that means that in a longer race, and after doing a 400m swim and a 13.5 mile bike ride, I ran at a faster pace than my 5k PR!  This is exciting, and it means my running training is on the right track.  I can't wait to break that 20 minute 5k next year!

Also very interesting was how I placed on the run segment:

Overall: 24 out of 293

Men: 19 out of 145

Men 20-24: 1 out of 10

Holy Cow!  I had the 24th fastest run out of everyone, and my time was faster than many of the elites.  I also had the fastest run in my age group.

Ok, ok, ok, I know that this means that you can't be good at one sport to do well in a triathlon—you need to be balanced in order to do well.  But, I knew going into this that I couldn't focus too much on swimming and biking, and that running would be my strongest segment.  I'm super happy with how it ended up.

David took some photos, and there was a race photographer (who may have gotten a less than flattering one of me on the bike), so I'll post some photos of me racing when I get my hands on some more photos.  I had a good time, but now it's time to worry about the marathon and focus exclusively on running now.