Location: Spotsylvania, VA
Date: 05/09/15
website: www.vtmts.com
Better late, than never....usually when I step back and reflect on my race for this long, I tend to polarize my overall reaction (either the race of my life or the worst sufferfest ever). But with all of this procrastination I think I've kept a level head on my overall performance.
I like this race because of the time of year and because it was my first triathlon (technically 2nd). Its a challenging course that really helps evaluate how your early season training has served you. Unfortunately, every year I always tend to lose a bit of tenacity in my training as the race approaches. I think its because its the first triathlon of the year, I have lower expectations, and I have bigger race performances planned for the rest of the year.
I have a lot of excuses for how this race went and I'm not going to bore you with them, because they are just excuses. At the end of the day, I set a PB for the course and I did achieve several of my goals.
Quick report, so I don't dwell on excuses:
Overall: 4:42:12 - (OA 25/416; AG 2/34)
Swim: 33:04
Bike: 2:30:35
Run: 1:34:46
Swim - Average time, but finished the swim feeling strong. My swim time may not be significantly improving (actually a little slower than last year), but my level of perceived fatigue getting out of the water is much lower. I tried something different this year.... I stayed in the pack. Usually I start far out to the outside and I stay there, avoiding any contact or interference. But this year I wanted to join the party, so I threw myself into the mix. All went well, I was able to stay on feet for at least the first half, but I had one guy to my left who would not get off my shoulder. He was swimming off course (to the right) and, I think, he was using me for sighting. The only problem is that I had feet in front of me and I couldn't get him to go left. Every time I gave him a little space to go around, he would follow me to the right. Every time I slowed, he would slow. It got really frustrating for a while, but finally the feet in front of me pulled away, so I was able to make a surge and get past him. About half way through the swim, I lost any feet so I was left alone. I was surprised when I finished that there were only 1 or 2 later wave swimmers that passed me.
T1 - I couldn't find my bike. Wasted a lot of time. Apparently there were three of us riding Cervelo P2C's and the bike next to us all had a Zipp disc wheel. The transitions only had the numbers facing one direction (opposite from the entrance into T1), so I thought I correctly counted my rack as the 5th rack. Oh well, probably lost a good 60s (no big deal).
Bike - Just weak. I felt "powerless" the whole ride. Its a rolling course and I just had a hard time getting into any sort of groove. Felt like I was on the verge of cramping in my obliques (!?!?!), couldn't get my HR up, normal cadence felt way to hard to maintain on the flats, etc, etc, etc....boo whoo. I'll stop with all the complaining. I improved my bike split by a few minutes from last year and I ran better off the bike. Moral of the story = I probably had too high of expectations going in.
T2 - uneventful, surprised to see that there weren't too many bikes on the rack already.
Run - This was my number one goal for the race. This run course is tough (for me). Its a 3 loop course with multiple long climbs and descents. Its a complete mind F@$*, for those of you who stare at your Garmin for the whole race because its really hard to settle into one pace. After 2 consecutive years of cursing this death march, I was determined to have a solid effort on the run. I got off the bike and immediately switched my self pity into motivation. I paced myself up the first uphill mile and then tried to settle into a perceived effort. Overall, I was really happy with my time. A little disappointed that I didn't have anything left to kick for the last loop, but I was able to produce a consistent effort.
Final takeaway - decent swim, rough bike, solid run. Happy with 2nd in AG and improvement from last year.
Thanks, as always, to Trisports.com for all of the support. First race rocking the 2015 uniform. Contact me for Trisports.com discount codes!
