Cville Int'l Tri Race Report

Today was the Cville International Triathlon. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I was on a relay team with two of my coworkers. I was doing the swim part.

We arrived on site this morning at a little before 6. First thing I did was check in and pick up my packet since I had not done it on Saturday. Normally I do pick these up early so I can make sure I have everything prepped with my race number, but for swimming they only write the number on you so all I could've picked up was my race cap.

For the next hourish I just hung around and chatted with folks. At 7:15 they held the prerace meeting down on the beach. They announced that the water temperature was 80 degrees so wetsuits could be worn but would disqualify the person from any prizes. I was just happy that the water was that warm since the air temperature was only about 65 degrees.

Due to the relatively few participants, there was only 3 starting waves for the swimmers, 4 minutes apart. The first wave was men 34 and under, Clydsedales, and relay teams. Second wave was all the women, and third wave was men 35 and over. A couple minutes before 7:30 my wave entered the water and walked/swam out to the starting point. Even though some of us weren't quite there yet they started promptly at 7:30.

During the initial rush I was kicked and run into a few times, but after that I was mostly out of the pack. I tried to keep a balance between pushing hard and not fighting the water (which happens when I push too hard). The swimming itself wasn't a huge strain, it was spotting the buoys that got me. As often as possible I tried to keep another swimmer within a few feet so I could either see them when my head was in the water or I could see the bubbles from their kick. This helped me feel like I was somewhat more on track.

When I got out of the water I gave the run up the hill all of my power. I dashed past an older man who was jogging and clearly saving strength for later. Since I had nothing else to do after handing off the chip I pushed as fast as possible. Midway up the hill I looked for David to make sure he was ready. He wasn't by his bike since I had told him it would take me about 35 minutes and it was only 27 minutes. I called out to him and he headed to his bike to grab the rest of his stuff. We swapped the chip and he was off.

After talking with other folks and getting a sense of average times, we concluded that the course was probably only ~1200m long. Thus everyone was coming out faster than expected. Open water lake courses like these are just hard to get consistent since the buoys can drift some despite being on anchors. Also some estimation is used as to where to place them.

The bike portion was 24ish miles and David gave an estimate of 90 minutes for him to complete it. After I handed off the chip I started my stop watch so we had an idea of when to expect him back. In the mean time, I changed, wandered around, chatted with folks, and cheered on the people who returned sooner than he did (both because they were better bikers but also were out of the swim well before me). Right on time he came in at 89 minutes and handed the chip off to Will.

We once again played the waiting game and timed when he left. Since the run is two loops we could get a sense when he would finish based on when he came around the first time. He passed by the first time at 28 minutes so we expected him to finish right around 56. His running was very consistent and he passed the finished line after 56 minutes.

Overall we completed the triathlon in just under 3 hours. I'm happy with how we did. We had no prayer of winning it since the first two relay teams had their bikers come back about an hour after David went out. They were much quicker out of the water and on the bike. That being said, we weren't last. I may have been the last relay swimmer out of the water, but David was able to pass one of them on the road. Will kept that advantage through the run.

All said, it was a pleasant morning.