Race Report: Blue Lake Olympic Triathlon

This race wasn't on my official IMAZ training plan, but the Blue Lake Triathlons in June (sprint on Saturday, olympic on Sunday) sort of kick off the main triathlon season for the region. I had also made a bet with our friend Dave: the winner gets to design a t-shirt that the loser must wear to the annual kayaking film festival in the fall, as well as 3 other kayaking events. He was pretty sure he was going to smoke me; I was pretty sure I was going to cream him. It was on!

My [accurate] pre-race prediction:

RACE DATE: 6/14/2009
DISTANCES: 1500 meter swim, 24.85 mile bike, 6.2 mile run

WARM-UP: None. We got there so dang early and then suddenly I was out of time. So I just did some shit-talking with Dave and filed into the water.

SWIM: time = 00:33:04, pace = 2:12/100m
Wow, this sucked for me. I haven't been spending much time in the pool lately and it showed. To make matters worse, I ended up in a "dead-zone" all by myself with no-one to draft off of and I couldn't swim in a straight line to save my life. To add insult to injury, there was a breast-stroker next to me the entire time that insisted on kicking me in the ribs every 100m or so. Point taken...I need to get my ass in the water on a more frequent basis.

Me coming out of the water thinking "more pool time needed, more pool time needed, ..."

T1: time = 03:00
It felt faster than 3 minutes. My wetsuit got hung up on my feet, but other than that it was smooth. I think my weakest point in transitions is simply the slow running through them. Our cheering crew for the day clocked the time difference between Dave and I coming out of the water -- he was ahead of me by over 6 minutes! Yikes!

BIKE: time = 01:13:42, pace = 20.23 mph
My "plan" was to hammer on the bike and try to make up as much lost ground as possible. I figure that on a good day I could get close to 19mph and Dave could maybe do 18.5. That would put me only a couple of minutes behind heading into T2 and then I could try and catch him on the run. Imagine my suprise when I was passing people at mile 8 and looked to my right and there he was! Yeah! I stuck out my tongue, slapped my ass, and left him in my dust. :-)

Me getting close to being done with my favorite part of the day:

I knew I wouldn't be seeing him again, so now my new goal was to try and finish under 03:05:00. I settled into a comfortable, maintainable pace and cruised on in to T2. The bike leg felt REALLY good. I attribute that to all of the long Saturday rides with Jenn and the Thursday time trials at Vancouver Lake. And that I'm totally in love with my bike.

T2: time = 02:14
Meh, not bad.

This is Dave and I at approximately the same time in the race.

RUN: time = 01:10:09, pace = 11:18 min/mile
If you follow my blog at all, then you know that the run is my hardest of the three legs. Hee hee, hardest of the three legs. Get it? But I digress. I've been making a considerable effort to bring up the weekly miles, while trying to build my aerobic base. I'm making progress, but not fast enough to have a "wow" time at this race. I'm happy with it.

As I got closer to the finish line I knew that I would beat 03:05:00 no problem, so I started shooting for under 3 hours. I probably could have done it if I had turned up the speed a tad earlier. But now I have something to shoot for next time.

Me crossing the finish line and all goofy-looking because I was happy to see Ken standing there.

Cool down:
Hugged Ken, did a happy dance, and then pretty much took a nap waiting for Dave to come through. :-)

Congratulating Dave as he finished it up.

Seriously though, he did awesome considering his stellar training plan of drinking beer with the boys most nights of the week. I want a rematch after he trains a bit, but I don't think he wants any of that. Now I get to design an awesome piece of fashion for him to sport in the company of hundreds of his closest friends.

Terri, Nadine, and I after the race.