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.

Cville Int'l Tri & Lazyman

July is almost upon us which means the return of the Lazyman Triathlon and the Cville International Tri.

Lazyman
I've participated the last two years in a Lazyman Triathlon put on by some friends at work. The goal is to do the entire distance of the Ironman Triathlon but instead of doing it all in one day, you have all of July to do it. That means 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles biking, and 26.2 miles running.

The last two years I have successfully completed both the swim and the run with miles to spare in both of them. I have not yet successfully completed the bike portion during the timeframe. Therefore this year I have created a plan in which I do a short bike (10ish miles) once a week and a long bike ride (30+ miles) on Sunday morning (except the last Sunday... more on that in a second). This plan allows a little flexibility in weather conditions and routes, but it is a much more solid plan for getting the miles done.

For swimming I'll probably knock it out fairly quickly since it is only 3863 meters and once a week I try to do 1500+ meters (working on distance) and another time in the week do 750+ meters (working on power/speed).

Since my marathon training program starts the last week in July with runs of 3 miles, 4 miles, 3 miles, and 5 miles all in that first week I need to make sure I'm in shape for it. Thus my plan for the rest of July is to do two 3 mile runs during the week and a 3-5 mile run on the weekend (starting with 3 and working up). Even if I low end the weekend run, that is still three 3 mile runs in a week, so I'll be done with the run portion in 3 weeks.

Cville International Triathlon
Once again I'm part of a relay team for the Cville International Triathlon. This year my team members are my coworkers David & Will. I will once again be doing the swim which is ~1500m (thus why my long swims start at 1500m and get longer). I really want to improve on my time over last year and give my team a fighting chance.

International Tri

My team rocked!

We took second in the relay category out of 5-6 teams that entered. It was back & forth with David's team to the point we ended fairly close together. The time for David's team was not posted as of the point we left the park so we don't know how they did besides also rocking it for giving it their all!

As I've posted earlier, I was doing the 1500m (~.93 miles) swim portion in the lake at Walnut Creek. All relay teams started in the 6th wave (Women 40+, Athenas, and relays) which means we started about 20 minutes after the first group. I started towards the back and pretty much stayed there. Between having shoulder problems recently and simply just not training my swim speed enough, there were only a few people behind me out of the water. That being said, it was a big motivator for me because I thought Karen had long since passed me and that the only other person near me was slightly ahead of me. Thus thinking I was DFL (dead f***ing last), I really pushed the last 500m to get ahead of atleast the one person and I think I passed another along that last push.

When I got towards the end it was an utter muddy, mucky mess that I was slipping in but I was determined to give it all I had and I sprinted up the hill to give the chip to G as fast as possible. At that point I saw David still there which meant Karen was still behind me. I hung out in the transition area to cheer her on. She was only 4-5 minutes behind me so G didn't have much of a lead.

Once both David & G were out biking for their respective teams, Karen & I rinsed off and went to hang with our runners (Gena for David's team, Courtney for my team)for about an hour because we figured that would be the absolute minimum time it would take to do the 23.5 mile bike course.

As we were waiting for our guys to make it in, one of our other coworkers actually finished the race and ended up placing first in his age group. Very impressive.

One hour twenty after he left, David came cruising in at full speed. He looked like he was going to face plant getting off the bike because how hard he pushed and how much his legs didn't want to run. He passed his chip off to Gena and we waited patiently for G to come in. Evidently David overtook G & his 5 minute lead in less than 8 miles. Another 15 minutes later G came in and also looked like he pushed incredibly hard, so we sent Courtney out for her 6 mile trail run.

The run on this triathlon is nasty because it is two loops of the same course, thus after the first loop you literally run next to the finish sign and have to keep going. When the ladies came through the half way mark (and we all of course cheered them on), Courtney had made up some time such that it appeared that if they kept the same paces they'd be dead even coming into the finish. In the end, Courtney pulled out all the stops and sprinted like a mad woman across the line. Gena came in not too much longer there after.

I'm very proud and happy for everyone who participated today. I think we all pushed hard and made it a real good race.

Week 3 of Lazyman

In week 3 of Lazyman I was hampered by very knotty shoulders that impacted everything (yes, you use the upperback in all three sports in some way). I did manage to complete .3 miles swim, 17.1 miles bike, and 10.2 miles run. As of the week cut off that means I'm done with the swim, almost done with the run (which I actually finished this morning but counts in week 4), and no where close on the bike.

In related news, the international Tri is this Sunday. Kinda seems surreal.

Eep!

The Cville Sprint Triathlon is this Sunday. Yes, as in 6 days from now. I waiver between feeling not ready and knowing that I will be fine. I won't be first, I won't be last, I just hope to survive. In training I've done the entire distance and even done some of them on the same day.

In other news, I knew I was not going to be ready for the biking and running for the International distance so I will be participating in that as part of a relay team. I will be doing the swim portion. 1500m of pure swimming joy.

Last piece of news that isn't really triathlon related is that I've also registered for the Charlottesville Women's 4 Miler again. I'm doing the training program again this year and put myself in the advanced group since that starts at 2 mile runs. Since I'm doing over 3 miles for routine practice, this is entirely reasonable. I'm going to try to follow the training schedule the best I can but after this triathlon I'm still going to need to get in swim time and I really want to up my boxing time to twice a week.