Cranberry Tri-Fest Sprint Race Report

Pregame:

Nothing special, regular race morning breakfast of coffee, plan bagel with cream cheese on the ride down (around 5am).  Made the mistake of allowing my toddler to “help” me prepare my stuff the day before so there was about an hour of panic when I realized while setting up transition that my bike helmet with still at home.  I vow to never judge anyone who makes this mistake; I can’t believe I didn’t have it with me.  Luckily the race director (who was amazing) was able to find me one from another racer.  Transition was set up and down at the water by 7:45.  My swim wave went off at 8:07.

.5m Swim: 17:34

Water temps were 77, wet suit legal so I wore one.  My complaining must be reaching the masses; I didn’t brawl with any breast-strokers.  Route was a rectangle and the lake was really clear.  Last year the swim course was short and this year it was right on.  My sighting was fairly accurate and I didn’t get too off course.  I’ve been skipping the swim workouts lately and paid for it, pooped towards the end.

T1: 3:17

Yes, I suck at transitions but this on involved a climb up a narrow stone staircase that was soaked by swimmers and then a quarter mile run to my bike so with that taken into account it’s not terrible. 

14m bike: 48:41

Not sure what happened out there but it wasn’t pretty.  It was a fairly flat 1 loop course, total climb of 377 feet.  I focused on keeping my cadence over 100 for the entire ride and maybe that did me in, but I was nauseous the whole ride and spent the last 2 miles wondering if I could puke without getting off my bike.  I had 1 Gu about 6 miles in and sipped on Vitalye every 10 mins or so. 

T2: 2:41

I need to learn to run with no socks and get the shoe laces that don’t tie and maybe I’ll get quicker in T2. 

3.1m run: 26:21

I have no idea how I pulled this off, especially given how terrible I felt on the bike.  Knowing the course from last year helped.  Running all those miles with the jogger helped on the hills. The run was through a residential neighborhood with a good amount of shade, most of the 2^nd mile is uphill.  My miles were all progressively faster with a last mile of 8:29.  And the nausea went away so who knows, but I’ll take it.

Overall: 1:38:32  10/22

I really like this race, it’s my second year competing in it.  Well organized and the things I didn’t like about it last year were corrected this year.  I’ve been skimping on swim and bike training and I felt it.  I’m very happy with the run (almost a 10 minute improvement from last year!) but was hoping for a better over all performance. Compared to last year my transitions and bike were all slower (swim can’t compare b/c last year was short).  Transitions are slower b/c last year I didn’t ride with clips so never changed my shoes.