At any rate, I ended up wearing more clothes for this race than I ever have. We swam in the nice, warm aquatic center, where I covered two Wyoming girls' state swim meets a few years back. It was cool to swim in this pool where I'd seen one of the most exciting sporting events of my 12 years in newspapers. For some reason, the pool was like bath water, not at all conducive to swimming competitively, only recreationally. Yuck.
The pool is Olympic-sized, 50 meters by 25 yards. Though the high school short-course (25-yard) season ended a while back, the pool still was configured for 21 25-yard lanes; the summer club season uses "long course," or the 50-meter configuration. If they'd taken the bulkhead out (a narrow plank, about 18 inches wide and 4 feet deep, separates the eight main competition lanes from the rest of the pool), they'd have had another one. So there was plenty of room for all 70 of us. I swam circles in a lane with two other guys, and they were kind enough to let me go first after watching me turn a couple of warmup laps. I must look intimidating.
The race started after about a 20-minute meeting, during which I heard the following: "There's no snow, so we lucked out on that." Now, the swim was 900 yards, which is as close to a half-mile (880 yards) as you can get in a 25-yard pool. Each competitor was responsible for counting his own laps, all 36 of them, or 18 (down and back equals one) if you prefer, which I do, because it's a lower number. Didn't stop me from miscounting. I do it in my workouts, too, and I end up looking at the clock to try and figure out where I am in a long swim. Saturday was no exception, as I hit the wall at an unacceptably fast time for what I thought was 18 laps. I said out loud, "That can't be right," and did another 50 yards. The time was far more realistic.
In the prerace meeting, the race director recommended putting some clothes on before running outside into the 30-degree chill, wet and semi-naked. So I put on tights and an UnderArmour mock turtleneck while frantically drying myself. To put it in perspective, I spent 3.5 percent of my total time of the race in the first transition, trying to put dry clothes on a damp body, before running outside.
At my bike I added socks, gloves, a skullcap, my helmet, shades, and shoes to the ensemble. I mounted up and headed out for my first ride on my new bike. The 15-mile course was an out-and-back into the countryside north of Gillette, not as far as Montana but I felt like I could see it from there; the Montana-Wyoming border is 51 miles north of Gillette. Now, I knew a bunch of people passed me in transition, but I figured I could get them back when it came down to actually competing. The goal was to not let anyone pass me on the ride, though that didn't get to the turnaround, as one guy passed me. Still, the ride went well save for a balky derailleur that will be dealt with before the next race. It was a rare course that took us downhill on the way out and uphill on the way back, as Gillette sits on a plateau. That's fine with me, as I can spin up hills and still have something left for the run.
Which I did, to a point. I ditched the bike and my tights in transition, as the tights would have cooked me on the run. I set my sights on the lead chick and the guy who passed me on the bike, but I got passed one more time on the run. Those three people were in front of me, in view, the entire 5-kilometer run, but I couldn't muster the jump necessary to catch them. So I pushed as best I could, didn't get passed again beyond the first mile, and even had a small kick at the end.
Lo and behold, I won my age group and finished fifth overall. My time was six minutes behind the overall winner, and the three people I mentioned were within a minute of me, so I could have gotten second overall if I had a little more speed. Alas, that's why I do sprints, to enter a different kind of pain and see what kind of speed I have. Furthermore, my placing was the result of a weak field. Had to be. No way I'm at the top of my age group, even in a small state like Wyoming, and I expect to get stomped at the Cheyenne Sprint later this summer.
In the meantime, it's on to the Boise Half-Ironman (I refuse to call it a 70.3 as the World Triathlon Corporation wishes). I'll swim twice a week and skate on the residual fitness from the season, while hitting the bike and run as hard as I can. I neglected them for too long during swimming (a 22:42 5K is good enough to win my age group, ugh), and I'll have to address those issues before heading up to Idaho.
No comments:
Post a Comment