5.21.2012

Memphis in May: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

May 14 - May 20
 
S:  10,282 yds - 2hr 35min
B:  75.49 mi - 3hr 35min
R:  27.19 mi - 3hr 21min
Good Races: 1
Bad Races : 1
Lessons Learned: a couple
Total:  9hr 31min

It was a light-ish week, mainly due to the Memphis in May Triathlon weekend.  Just like last year, I planned on doing the sprint on Saturday and the olympic on Sunday, with hopes of making a little bit of cash in this so called "Amateur Challenge" to pay for gas or something.  In short, the Good was my Sunday olympic distance race.  I had a sweet 57:xx bike and a 39:xx run in super hot/no shade conditions, which I was happy about.  It was solid execution and I was pleased.  Although the race was good, the Bad was my swim in the olympic race.  Swimming 25:xx is not going to cut it.  Now we did have to swim through a ton of swimmers in older age groups that started before us, but that is no excuse.  The Ugly was my sprint race on Saturday.  I pretty much blew it, and was totally embarrassed considering how my running has been going and the couple of 5k's that I've ran recently.  I got my butt handed to me, and that's about it.  People that I should normally crush beat me by 2 minutes, which in a sprint race is a beat down.  I got owned.  Anyways, here's a short recap.

Sprint Tri
Swim - 8:08
T1 - 0:47
Bike - 30:49
T2 - 0:57
Run - 20:34
Total - 1:01:14
The swim felt ok, but then I got on the bike and it felt WAY too hard given the wattage I was putting out.  I backed off towards the end because things weren't feeling good, but the run was still awful.  I haven't felt that bad in quite some time.  I'm not really sure what happened, but it resulted in a beat down and it was not very fun!

Olympic Tri
Swim - 25:08
T1 - 0:55
Bike - 57:28
T2 - 0:52
Run - 39:55
Total - 2:04:18
I didn't feel bad on the swim, but the results speak otherwise.  Clearly, the bike was a lot of fun.  Stiff headwinds greeted us for the first 20k, but the last 20k saw a tailwind and a 28 mph average speed.  The run started off slow for the first mile but I found my legs and stayed cooled for a good performance.

Overall, the competition in both races was pretty stiff and the weather was HOT!!!  I ended up 20th in the sprint and 22nd in the olympic, giving me 12th out of 65 in the Amateur Challenge competition for a $75 payout.  The sprint could have gone a little better but I learned some stuff, moved on, recovered, and had a good race the next day.  The olympic race was pretty stacked.  Any time a 2:04 is good for only 22nd, you know it was a tough field.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the season, I think I've knocked off most of the rust on the racing legs, so we'll see how the summer goes!

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