This would be the 2nd time that I have competed in this event, last year I placed 52nd out of 100 entrants, not bad for my first ever triathlon event. I was really looking forward to this event for a couple reasons, first my good friend Cory was entered again (51st last year with same time as me 2:59:55) and second it was close to home, only 45 minutes away. Cory and I had set a goal of top 20 for this event, and set out a training schedule that would hopefully allow us to attain our goal. Training started out great, for the first 6 weeks or so we were dead on with the training feeling like we were far above the year priors training. At around week 7 or so the wheels fell off for both of us, seemed like something always came up and training got pushed off to the side. I am also competing in the Psycowpath MTB racing series this year for the first time and bike training took precedence over everything else. As the Xterra got closer and closer I squeezed in some running here and there, and kinda put the swim on hold figuring it would be as it would.
Even though Branched Oak Lake is only 45 minutes away Cory and I had decided to stay in Lincoln the night before, we went over to Cycle Works to check in and get our packets and off we went to get some carbs. We hit up the Garmin for restaurants and Valentino's popped up and only 1 mile away...SCORE. Except for it was a carry-out only...grrrrr so again Garmin was put to use, 2nd Valentino's was not there anymore, at this point I told Cory anywhere would be ok. He was determined to find a Val's so a 3rd try and low and behold we found it and the buffet was incredible, hard not to over eat.
Race morning came and we headed out to the Lake, this years event was different in that there was 2 different transition areas, 1 for coming out of water to the bike (helmet,gloves,shoes,sunglasses) and second one off the bike into the run (vibrams). This was somewhat hectic making sure that you have all the right equipment at each area.
Gun went off and off we went, the swim went as planned - just get through it - as I was nearing the beach I looked to see where Cory was and sure enough he was right next to me, we got out of the water only seconds apart. On to the bike (YES) I started off pacing myself even though I wanted to put the pedal to the metal, the first part of course was through a mowed field and then into the singletrack. My game plan was to wait til the singletrack and then hit it hard. Going through the singletrack Cory was just ahead of me until a rider slipped up on a rocky section and that's when I made my move, I passed couple riders and on I went picking off rider by rider. When we hit the paved portion of the course (not fond of but watcha gonna do) heading over to Area 7 Cory caught up with me and we rode Area 7 nose to tail and again hit the transition area seconds apart. Now onto the run (uggghhh) my weakest part and knowing I just did a tri 2 weeks prior and competed in 3 short course Psycowpath races the weekend before all in the back of my head. I started off with a slow pace just trying to maintain and not get passed, as I kept going I got in a rhythm slow by standards but to me it was good. When I finished I was happy with my run overall. Cory had a better pace than me in the run and finished a couple spots ahead of me under 2 minutes ahead. We unfortunately did not attain our goal of top 20 but we did fair well Cory finished
34th 3:00:19 and I finished
36th at
3:02:13 and
6 out of
13 in age division. Looking forward to racing again next year. Full results can be found here:
http://onlineraceresults.com/race/view_race.php?race_id=15572&relist_record_type=result&lower_bound=0&upper_bound=70&use_previous_sql=1&group_by=default#racetop
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| Cory & I after going thru the finish line |
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