Lifetime Fitness Triathlon 2005
In the end, Lifetime Tri went fine, although the heat and humidity were brutal. We registered for the "Friends and Family" division, since Brian and CB are 29, while I'm 31. So Friends and Family allowed us to race together, starting within 6 seconds of each other. So we had our own micro competition, while the both of our respective age groups started well ahead of us.
This made the race a little different, in that all of our age-group competition was well ahead of us. This makes it tough to gauge how you're doing relative to your age group. Given a chance to do it again, I might opt to skip the Friends and Family and just register as age groupers. Actually, now that I think about it, the three of us will all be in the 30-34 age bracket next year anyway, so it's a moot point.
With no wetsuit, my swim suffered and was a few minutes slower. The swim itself was OK, although there was a point about 5 minutes in where I started to feel tired and started to freak out. But I got through that. I tend to do A LOT of breaststroke, alternating between breaststroke and freestyle when one group of muscles gets tired. There was another guy doing the same thing, and we were neck-and-neck for most of the swim.
One weird thing I experience whenever I open water swim - after I've been in the water I while, I feel this urgent need to burp, but I usually can't. I gets worse and worse, and usually I'm not able to get burps out until after I exit the water (usually a few miles into the bike course) after which I feel immediately better. Well today, I was thankfully able to get the burps outduring the swim, which helped immensely.
The bike was good. With the heat, it felt good to be cruising, and it's great fun to ride Minnehaha Parkway without having to stop for any of the (numerous) stop signs and traffic lights. Rode 21mph average (at least that's what my computer says - their "official" results say 20.5mph but I believe my computer since it's proven itself accurate in the past.) Had beads of sweat on my shoulders the whole ride, so I know I was working hard. Almost went down in the roundabout - I was passing another rider on the left, but started getting forced inside, and my wheel went squirrelly when it hit the ridge between the pavement and the concrete gutter.
I was hoping to catch Brian on the bike, but it was not to be. He was up ahead of me somewhere, and I had no idea how far. My only hope was to catch him on the run, and it took me 3+ miles just to do that. I caught CB on the bike at around mile 22 - CB had a great ride considering he just started biking last year.
The heat on the run was brutal, and it took almost 3 miles for me to get my legs. But even then I just couldn't muster any speed - averaged 8:34 minutes/mile on the run - I should be running sub-7 minute miles for a race like this.
My overall time put me around the top 25% of my age group, which is good enough.
So all in all it was fine - and I'm glad it's over. I'm starting to think putting together a relay would be the way to go ... CB could swim, Brian could bike, I could run. Although I'd like to bike, this would allow me to skip the swim, probably a good compromise. And I think our relay could actually kick some butt.
This made the race a little different, in that all of our age-group competition was well ahead of us. This makes it tough to gauge how you're doing relative to your age group. Given a chance to do it again, I might opt to skip the Friends and Family and just register as age groupers. Actually, now that I think about it, the three of us will all be in the 30-34 age bracket next year anyway, so it's a moot point.
With no wetsuit, my swim suffered and was a few minutes slower. The swim itself was OK, although there was a point about 5 minutes in where I started to feel tired and started to freak out. But I got through that. I tend to do A LOT of breaststroke, alternating between breaststroke and freestyle when one group of muscles gets tired. There was another guy doing the same thing, and we were neck-and-neck for most of the swim.
One weird thing I experience whenever I open water swim - after I've been in the water I while, I feel this urgent need to burp, but I usually can't. I gets worse and worse, and usually I'm not able to get burps out until after I exit the water (usually a few miles into the bike course) after which I feel immediately better. Well today, I was thankfully able to get the burps outduring the swim, which helped immensely.
The bike was good. With the heat, it felt good to be cruising, and it's great fun to ride Minnehaha Parkway without having to stop for any of the (numerous) stop signs and traffic lights. Rode 21mph average (at least that's what my computer says - their "official" results say 20.5mph but I believe my computer since it's proven itself accurate in the past.) Had beads of sweat on my shoulders the whole ride, so I know I was working hard. Almost went down in the roundabout - I was passing another rider on the left, but started getting forced inside, and my wheel went squirrelly when it hit the ridge between the pavement and the concrete gutter.
I was hoping to catch Brian on the bike, but it was not to be. He was up ahead of me somewhere, and I had no idea how far. My only hope was to catch him on the run, and it took me 3+ miles just to do that. I caught CB on the bike at around mile 22 - CB had a great ride considering he just started biking last year.
The heat on the run was brutal, and it took almost 3 miles for me to get my legs. But even then I just couldn't muster any speed - averaged 8:34 minutes/mile on the run - I should be running sub-7 minute miles for a race like this.
My overall time put me around the top 25% of my age group, which is good enough.
So all in all it was fine - and I'm glad it's over. I'm starting to think putting together a relay would be the way to go ... CB could swim, Brian could bike, I could run. Although I'd like to bike, this would allow me to skip the swim, probably a good compromise. And I think our relay could actually kick some butt.
posted by equipoise at 10:47 AM
1 Comments:
Glad you made it without the wetsuit. You were so concerned I was worried you'd freak yourself out.
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