This was only my second sprint triathlon. After a not so successful race in Boise70.3 I changed my bike position back to the “old” not so aero position. The race instruction from my coach were simple. Go all out on the swim, push 290 Watts on the bike and start the run with a 5:40min/mile and try to hold on.
Swim:
I was amazed what a chaos the swim was there were probably something between 50-100 people in the wave but it seemed every single one of them wanted to win the sprint to the first buoy. It was some good contact sport and shortly after the first buoy people around me started slowing down and I was finally able to move up. Unfortunately, at that point the fast feet were gone. As my coach told me I should go as hard as I can. I think I did a pretty good job on that, because once I came out of the water I hardly had enough air to start running. I assume the course was slightly short, but according to the results I swam 400m including a 100m run to transition in about 5:18.
T1:
Fairly quick transition, but I lost a couple seconds getting the wetsuit over my feet. 48 seconds.
Bike:
As planned I started with 290Watts and I saw Josh 30 seconds up the street. There was also another guy right behind him which looked liked drafting to me. The course was a 2 loop course and it took me almost the first half of the course to catch up to those two. I overtook them and hopped to drop them, but far from it. On every downhill they would blow by me and sometimes even on the uphill. I tried to keep my efforts steady but getting overtaken and having to fall back to get out of the drafting zone meant I wasn’t pushing my Watts. I knew that I was a better runner than Josh but I didn’t know about the other guy. From his looks I assumed he is a stronger biker than runner but nevertheless I still wanted to have my best race. Besides I was eying to finish a sprint triathlon in under 1h. So once the 2nd loop started I decided to up it a notch on the hills and downhill and during the whole second loop I only got overtaken once. I knew that I was pushing myself to the edge but that is the whole point in a sprint. During the whole 2nd loop I didn’t see anybody in front of me. So I was wondering what position I was in, I knew from times from previous years that I had to be very close to the front. When I made the last turn into transition, one guy in a black tri suite came running out of transition. So at least one person is still in front of me, but Josh and the other guy were still right behind me.
T2:
I struggled a little to get my socks on, but after 31 seconds I was out of transition running again.
Run:
The 3rd guy in our group was just in front of me but he was running a good pace. I was following him out of transition and noticed that the 1/4 bottle of perform I drank has upset my stomach a little. Nothing I could do about it, only a 5k. The other guy started slowing and I quickly dropped him. I looked up the street and saw a guy running topless in front of me. “Darn”, apparently there are at least 2 guys in front of me. I measured the time of how much I was behind at the first turn and it was 40 seconds. At mile 1 it was about 30 seconds, so I knew I was closing. It took me another mile to close in but around mile 2 I was passing him and he didn’t even bother to put up a fight. I realized that he folded down his one piece tri-suit, so potentially it was him that I saw getting out of transition but I couldn’t be sure. I kept pushing and eventually turned into the park where there was a short loop before the finish. I started to eying the finish to see if there was a banner, but couldn’t see one. At the turn I saw someone behind me but too far away to catch me. Than I saw the race clock and noticed that I potentially even could go below 59min and tried to push harder. In the finish area I looked around to see if there was someone else in front of me but couldn’t see anybody. The 2nd person finished and than the announced realized that the two of us were in the finish area. He asked for our numbers and announced that we just finished 1st and 2nd. The camera guy heard that and told me that he had missed me, since he wasn’t expecting me yet. So to get a finisher picture I went back to finish line to simulate another finish for the camera.
Overall Awards
I finished the sprint triathlon in 59:05. As planned I averaged 285 Watts on the bike which was an average speed of 24miles/h (40km/h) and ran a 5:41min/mile on the run. I even finished the 5K in a new PR with 17:38. Unfortunately, according to my Garmin the course was a little short. About 100m and since the course is not certified I hardly can count it a new PR 🙂
Award ceremony, I took the overall win which I received a nice trophy and a free entry for next years race. I also got the 1st place medal for my age group 🙂
Guido – faster than the camera! 🙂 Bravo!