This was our third year in a row traveling to Lake San Antonio, CA for the Wildflower Triathlon. I did the Olympic distance in 2006 and the Long course (Half IM distance) last year in 5:53. This was my first A race of 2008 and I wanted to do it in under 5:30. Nate, Kat, Patrick, Megan and I drove down on Friday and camped in the park both nights. Nolan and Brad also drove down with us. Sabrina, Daniel, Mandylee, Graham, and Katherine rolled in early Saturday morning as well.
The Race:
I felt great on the swim. The one thing I focused on was waiting until later in the recovery part of my stroke to start the pull with the opposite hand. A few times I consciously thought about this I noticed myself speed up in relation to other swimmers. Swimming with the masters class at Sports West has certainly helped my swimming a ton and helped me take 8 minutes off of my swim this year. They said the water was 65 degrees, which felt great. I probably would have been comfortable in a sleeveless wetsuit instead of the full suit.
This was only my second ride using my new PowerTap power meter. I hadn't done any tests to set up my power zones or anything so I used it more to just record the data than to actually pace myself on the ride. I basically tried to stay under 320 watts while climbing and between 200 and 250 on the flats. Nasty Grade was shorter than I remembered so I probably could have pushed a bit harder up that hill. There was much less wind this year than last but I was able to shave my bike time down to 2:42 from 3:04. After a quick review of the power file, which had my pr:HR at 7% (cardiac drift) I didn't have the muscular endurance fitness I would have liked, though. This is probably just from lack of long training rides.
It was night and day difference on the run this year compared to last year. Last year I ran the first few miles and then had to walk/run most of the rest of the race and finished the run split in 2:05. This year I drank about 900 Calories of Perpetuem on the bike as well as some Gatorade and 5 Endurolyte pills. I alternated drinking Gatorade and water at the aid stations on the run. I felt so much better this year and ran the half marathon in 1:44. I did get a blister on my right inside arch about mile 5. I probably should have taken the time to put on socks and also more of a trail shoes instead of the Asics DS Racer. My total time was 5:11:12. It's crossed my mind to shoot for under 5 hours next year, but I'm not committing to that yet. Here are some fun little animations of me beating myself. I wore a GPS unit each year, which tracked my location, speed, and HR throughout the race. These show this year's race versus last year's.
Dot Race for the Swim
Dot Race for the Bike
Dot Race for the Run
(requires Internet Explorer and Adobe SVG)
Thanks, Megan for cooking dinners, listening to triathlon talk all weekend and pushing my bike up the hill (even if you made me carry it on the steep part:)).
Read more!
