Note: I’ll add links to the official website and adjust the splits once I get the official times. (starting the watches by hand was a little off)
My season plan called for a Olympic distance race as preparation for my Ironman. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find on so I picked the longest sprint triathlon I could find: Whidbey Island Triathlon 1/2mile swim, 19mile bike, 3.8mile run. Going into this race I wasn’t nervous nor too excited. I knew I could do the distance and it was just a good form test. Maybe I should have been a little bit more excited about the race and followed my standard race preparation since my digestive system wasn’t in sync as it normally is.
Swim:
After IM CDA this was a very pleasant swim. I started to the very left which was about 5m from the buoy line and swam directly to the first turn, I didn’t have a single body contact. This made for a completely different swim experience than an Ironman.
Even though I started out a little too fast and was a little short of breath I kept pushing and eventually settled in. After the first turn I was able to draft off someones feet till almost the end of the swim. I finished the 1/2mile swim in 12:37.6.
T1:
The run out of the water into T1 was very steep and it was hard to run, especially because the HR is high in the swim run transition anyway. Once I was at my gear I felt very dizzy so I decided to sit down to put on my shoes. After that I grabbed my bike and made my way out of T1. (Time 1:52)
Bike:
When I mounted my bike, there was a hill right there. So my first couple peddle rotations were at 400watts to get up that hill. A
competitor opted to run up that short steep hill in his bike shoes rather than biking. We reached the top of the hill at about the same time. He fell back a little while mounting his bike but overtook me a few seconds later already. I noticed that he was from the next wave (4min after me). Maybe that finally should be enough motivation to improve my swimming. The race plan called for 290Watts in the flats and low to mid 300 on hills. As it turns out that wasn’t that easy to do. Every time I stopped focusing on pushing hard I fell to 250Watts. To keep the watts high I constantly had to tell myself to go hard. Besides the course was hardly ever flat so my Watts were all over the place. Above 300Watts on the hills and low 100s for downhills. I was pushing hard on the bike and had to ignore the thought that I have to run afterwards and just trust in my ability to do so. I overtook a hand full of people on the course but was mostly riding alone until the second lap were many others were still doing their first lap. The two accidents I had in June/July also impacted my riding, I wasn’t as comfortable going fast around corners anymore and every time I had someone in front of me it was obvious that I loose more speed/time in corners. At least my GPS indicates that I have still my courage to go downhill. My max speed was 70km/h. At the end of the second loop I just caught another guy and had only a few miles to go. I decided to push a little harder that he couldn’t stay with me, I was thinking that I would rather start the run alone than having someone right with me.
I jumped of the bike in 51:16min averaging 36.6km/h which is pretty good for such a hilly course.
T2:
While running through T2, I counted 3 bikes (As it turned out there was a fourth one which I didn’t see). So I though I was in 4th position and only need to catch one to make it onto the podium. I looked back to see who is behind me and saw the triathlete I just overtook entering T2, while I was leaving it. (Time 49seconds)
Run:
The run started with a brutal hill out of T2 and than followed some trails through the forest. I really enjoyed this part of the run. Unfortunately, all these turns and the forest prevented me from knowing how far out the 3rd place is. Out of the forest I saw him quickly about 200m in front of me. Once I was on the main road behind him, I started to take times of how much ahead of me he was. I did this by checking my watch when he was at a particular spot and how long it took me to get there. The first time it was 25 seconds. A little while later it was only 17 seconds. And then I was close enough that I knew that it was only a question of time. A little while later I passed him (same age group) and he didn’t even bother to match my speed. Though after him, I couldn’t see anybody in front of me. Even on long streight stretches (~0.5km). So I had no target and just had to keep motivating myself. I knew on the last mile there was a slight uphill for about 800m before it would go down towards the finish line. I was wondering how my legs would deal with this hill, but to my surprise that hill wasn’t that bad and my legs were still feeling strong. I ran the last half mile in a 5:30min/mile and finished the 3.8mile (6.11km) run in 22:39. I had the second fastest run split of the day.
My overall time was 1:29:14.
Finish:
Once I crossed the line I started counting and I saw 3 finisher there already. Well, that meant I missed the overall podium. But all of them were from different age groups. So I won my AG!
The overall winner (the guy who overtook me out of T1) crushed the curse record. He was a former pro and is now part of the Unites States Armed Forces Triathlon Team and will be going to the CISM World Triathlon championship in Lausanne (Aug 22-26). Once I learned that I didn’t feel too bad about my swim anymore 🙂
As it turns out another guy from a later wave also beat me by 13 seconds so I ended up 5th overall. It would have been interesting to see if I could have beaten him in a head to head finish.
I was called to the podium twice. For finishing in the top 10 and for winning my AG which I received a nice medal for. It is these moments when you notice if you are alone at an event. I wished I could have shared this moment with someone I knew.
Conclusion:
Great Race! I would do it again and maybe I will. To set a new course record for my age group, I only need to go about 50 seconds faster 🙂
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