Angills Can Fly

Well this was a warm up race for Racine, recommended by Rich Haas of the BCLC and another one of my regular inspirations to be faster. I was expecting a normal sprint distance but found out 2 days prior that the distances were not standard. It was however sponsored by Runners High n’ Tri which is one of the shops I support so that was a fun element.  Biggest mistake of this race was going on vacation to Mexico the week before; I did train while there but not as hard as I should have.

It was an absolutely beautiful day for a race. It started at 3:30 as planned, ate my usual bowl of oatmeal and drank a cup of coffee while watching youtube clips of various ironman races. Jess and I left the house on time by 4:15. Was a bit confused driving around looking for the split transitions but eventually found both. Dropped my running gear at T2 and drove over to T1 and parked where Jess could easily get in the car. I had a funny issue before the race started as my big toenail was falling off from the 1/2 marathon I did last month and it was lifting off my toe while I was doing my warm up swim; so both Jess and I looked around for medical tape to wrap my toe in and eventually found it about 2 mins before the race started.

The horn went off and I was in the first wave and as usual I kept my face above water for a good part of the first leg just paying attention to everyone around me. I am still very conscious  that if I get a heel in the face it would ruin my race, even though there is a lot of bumping side to side and the occasional hand collision with other swimmers. I felt okay but not great through the swim, I have not been training with my wetsuit which forces me to use some additional muscles to overcome the buoyancy of the neoprene. My shoulders were definitely still sore from the 1k m I did to warm up 2 days earlier. I am pretty satisfied with my ability to maintain a semi straight line though according to my garmin tracking.

I got caught behind someone in the narrow isles of transition wadling in their bike shoes so that slowed me down a bit (2 min transition time) and hopped on the bike at the mount line. About 50 yds into the bike was a hill I didn’t anticipate and I was not in the right gear; lesson learned the hardwayI could not make it up with my feet out of my shoes and possibly even in the wrong chain rung. I had to dismount and run up the hill with my bike and re-mount at the top, needless to say this was not a feel good way to start the bike. It was a very nice ride through the town of Lake in the Hills, a couple rollers and then a few really steep hills which were challenging but all in all fun.

As I came into T2 the path to get into the corral was long and winding so I probably lost a few seconds coasting in and trying to figure out where I was supposed to go, but my T2 time was 38 seconds so I’m satisfied with that. The run was extremely challenging for me and proved that I certainly need more hill work. During the run I heard several first time participants complain to the effect of “what is up with these hills, up down up down … I just can’t get in a comfortable rhythm”. I was hoping for a much better run time on this race as most of my 4-5 mile training runs are in the low 8′s but I ended up with a 9:39 pace on the run. I only used one gel on this race and it was about 10 mins into the run.

After the race we ate at a breakfast restaurant called “Burnt Toast” which was very good food and there were quite a few racers in there sharing stories. So… chalk another one up, with more lessons learned and an overall good experience.

Photo album – http://digiternal.net/photos/main.php?g2_itemId=6074

Swim: 15:06  T1: 2:01  Bike: 47:21  T2: 0:38  Run: 38:15 Total: 1:43:19

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 amand is filed under Races. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.