S: 10,063 yds - 2hr 31min
B: 95.66 mi - 5hr 5min
R: 25.97 mi - 3hr 13min
Total: 10hr 48min
On Saturday morning, I headed up to Knoxville, TN for my first triathlon of 2012: Rev3 Knoxville Oly. The race site was based around Neyland Stadium and the University of Tennessee Women's Rowing boathouse...which was kind of cool because I was a rower myself in college. After checking out the boathouse, I went for a quick swim in the river and an easy bike and run to make sure everything was working properly. Next was packet pick-up and then I met up with the University of Alabama Triathletes for dinner and lodging for the night. As for the race itself, the short story is a 14th place overall amateur finish with a consolation prize of winning the male 25-29 age group, which is fine because they gave out a case of power bars and a free race entry. Now on to the details:
Swim - 22:46
The water temperature was probably upper 60's, which felt pretty good considering temperatures were going to get hot. I started out on the far right right behind local Birmingham hotshot Aaron Ainsworth, knowing he'd probably swim ~20...maybe I could grab his feet for a little while. The swim was pretty uneventful. I never ventured off course and felt like I was working pretty hard. Most of the top 10 swam between 20-21 minutes, so I didn't lose too much time.
T1 - 3:46
I know what you're thinking...why on earth is this so long? Basically T1 was at least 600 meters or so. First we ran all the way down the super long dock at the boathouse, then through the lobby of the boathouse, then a good 400 meters to the parking deck where transition was, then to the OTHER side of the parking deck, then into transition to do normal transition activities. Whew!
Bike - 1:02:20
The good news is that my power output was pretty good...and it felt really good. The course was definitely a little on the slower side due to 2 nice climbs (by triathlon standards), and a ton of sketchy intersections, railroad tracks, and horrible road quality that involved hitting the brakes. There was only 1 amateur that went under 60 minutes and only 5 guys that beat me (that I can see), so I feel slightly ok with a slower than expected bike split. If only I were as aero as James, I probably could have turned that wattage into another couple mph!
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| "the race machine" |
T2 - 1:28
Uneventful, except that someone had put my wetsuit on top of my bike rack so I had to move it out of the way in order to rack my bike. To whoever did that, thanks.
Run - 40:12
Right out of transition, I knew I was sitting in around 9th place in my wave. The one wave that started behind us had the male < 24 year olds, so I figured some of them might be close...so the goal was to just run as fast as I could and try not to blow up. Right out of the gate, I could see a guy about 30 seconds up the road. After 1-1.5 miles I had reeled him in and was all by myself. The weather was starting to get hot, but it was manageable. My Garmin was having difficulties so I didn't know exactly how fast I was running, but it felt decent. THEN, I had my only falter of the race...at around mile 4.5 or so, it felt like someone just "flipped a switch" on me. I got kind of lightheaded, my legs just felt like they "shut down", and I noticed that my heart rate felt unusually rapid. This prompted me to look down at my Garmin and notice that my heart rate that was around 180 bpm a couple minutes earlier was now floating around 230. I've known Garmin to be real finicky with heart rate, but what scared me was that my body was feeling very weird...something I've never felt in 1000's of hours of training over the last 5 years. For a minute, I actually remember thinking to myself "at least I'm close to transition so if I pass out they'll find me quickly". After a couple minutes of some slow running, I started to feel semi-normal again, just in time for a 3/4 mile slight uphill to the finish line. Below are the splits from the results. The first half (or maybe even slightly longer) was painful but good. The second part was due to be slower anyways because of the hill, but it also included my half mile meltdown.
- split 1 - 2.74 m - 17:14 - 6:17/mi
- split 2 - 3.46 mi - 22:58 - 6:38/mi
Results here, search for #277
All in all, I'm pleased with the race. No major screw ups and the only part where I think I really lost time was that couple minute stretch on the run. I definitely knocked a little bit of rust off the racing legs...it's funny, but no matter how hard the training is, almost nothing compares to racing flat out for 2 hours. I'm a huge proponent in racing A LOT, because I feel like there's some things that a race gives you that you just can't do in training. Also, huge props to Stephen Hammond and Alex Kamman for solid race results...here we are with our spoils!
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| Alabama Tri and alumni (me) with spoils! |
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