Waseca Triathlon

Well... I realize it has been a while since my last blog and I found the draft that never got posted. Last week was supposed to be a taper week before the Waseca Sprint Tri. I was out on a bike ride and was feeling great moving almost effortlessly, low heart rate, winds at my side, and higher than normal speed.... BOOM... flat tire at mile 7. It was a big disappointment since I was cruising along so well. I will make a longer blog short by saying I ended up having to also replace the tire that only had about 450 miles on it because it tore through or got cut. The good news is that I put on a Continental Grand Prix 4000 as a replacement.

While I was waiting for my wife to come pick me up as I did not have a spare tube, and it would not have done me any good at that point, I decided to snap off a picture of my cockpit. Old school ipod armband to keep my phone secure on the aero bars, Garmin 305 with quick release mounted to the stem, my older Cateye Wireless mounted to the top tube to give me distance while the Garmin shows time, cadence, HR, and speed.

I just picked up a Profile Design AquaCell with brackets for 15 bucks minus 12 something in eBay bucks, I ended up shelling out a whopping 3 dollars for it all. I saw one last weekend, and it was fairly big, but I will wait and get it installed and then do a review! I also picked up a set of Speedplay Zero Stainless pedals and Bontrager RXL shoes and plan to start using after the Waseca Tri.

Waseca Tri
Where to begin...The day turned out to be great weather. My overall results were pretty close to what I had imagined which should be good, but I was not quite satisfied with my results.

My wife and I waiting for the sprint start:
The swim
The course must have drifted somewhat because it was not .25 miles. I took a look closer at SportTracks and I must say the more I learn and use this tool, the better it is. First I will gripe a bit about the course layout. Wave 1 - Long course M, Wave 2 - Long Course F, they left 25-30 minutes ahead of everyone else, so on this course where it is a shared course and they just swim further out into the lake, it did not work out very well. The first male swimmers were starting to come back in as Wave 3 was going to start. This wouldn't have been so bad if it would have been a triangle shape, but the entry and exit was at the same point, it caused issues. When we started, we had to swim to the right of the public beach ropes, then back to the left to the course markers. As you can see my start and finish paths cross each other.

So lets say I was not swimming perfect lines of the course, I go back and see in SportTracks that my point next to my starting point is .35 miles with a time of 9:38. I back track a ways and lets say I swam an extra .05 not being efficient. so .3 miles of swimming in 8:37, much closer to what I was expecting, or at least my training swim. Regardless to say, I did not get my swim time below 8 minutes as planned.


The Bike
Pretty easy course with very little elevation change. I did not realize we had the wind at our back on the way out because I was distraught that neither my Cateye distance nor my Garmin cadence were reading correctly. Note to self double check these things before the next race. I averaged 18.8, slower than my last race and I do not have much to say about it. The course was easier, shorter and less windy than my last race so I have no clue what happened here.

The RunAs you will hear me say from time to time, although I ran the 2008 Twin Cities Marathon, I am not a runner. I train for distance running and 9 minute miles normally make me smile if I can even sustain them. Shorter runs are not my specialty, so needless to say my 8:10 average over 4.4 miles was gladly accepted. This was very close to my goal of sub 8 minute run average. I do have to give props to the guy who ran with me and made me push myself a bit harder than I probably would have if I were alone. I heard him running up behind me, our cadence almost identical. He then said "Hey I got you on the swim and you beat me on the bike, lets finish this out together" I was not sure if I would be able to keep up, especially after nursing my ankle and not having any long runs recently. We chatted and although my heart rate was above what it normally is, I was still comfortable running and talking.
I finished 46th overall out of 134 finishers, not too bad. My age group was a bit tougher as I finished 7/10. Swim and Bike rankings were both 35th which was also good for me. I hope to keep improving my run times, and get back on the bike and build up for St Paul Tri in 3 weeks, 2 hard weeks to learn my clipless pedals and shoes and build, then a taper week before.

I also picked up a pair of Zoot Ultra TT shoes. I will be trying both cycling and running without socks for the sprints. This will be a huge change for me since my feet sweat like crazy.

More to come later this week, but here are some pics that my brother shot with my Sony Alpha 300 DSLR and his first time using it.. not so bad. Also should add my wife accomplished her goal and was coming off a week and half break due to having her wisdom teeth pulled.