This was an absolutely wonderful race. The venue is beautiful, it was organized very well, and had very good post race food.
My goal for the race today was not to finish fast or even place in my category, but to treat it as a training session and keep my pace nice and easy, and finish the race feeling like I could keep going for a while longer. For future reading when I mention my goal times, those are the times in intended to finish slower than as opposed to faster than. Like I said, I wanted to to go slowly not fast.
Everything started out well, got there on time and with plenty of time to take it easy and get everything set up. The water temp was 74 and wet suit legal. I haven\'t swam in a wet suit since may so I wasn\'t used to the feel of it. But wow, swimming without it, made swimming with it SO much easier. My goal for this segment was to be slower than 30 minutes. I really felt that I took my time and went nice and easy. As usual, making it to the turn around buoy is always harder than making it back. And I don\'t know why that is, but I always feel stronger in the second half of a swim. Maybe I need to warm up longer? Anyway, I took the swim nice and easy and didn\'t really encounter too many other swimmers. The sight buoys were set up terribly out of line, and I think a lot of swimmers were fooled by them and swim a longer distance than need be. I swam straight at the turn buoy and stayed pretty much alone. One fun aspect of the race was that the river which feeds the lake is MUCH colder than the lake, and you finish the swim by swimming up the river a tad bit. And wow could you feel the separation. Anyway, I finished the swim in about 28 minutes. Faster than I intended, but I definitely was not pushing it.
The transition was FAR. It took about 2 minutes of running just to get to my gear. I ran, but ran slowly as I was really in no rush. Getting the wet suit off is always a fun time and I as usual struggled like crazy getting the stupid thing off. But I did, got my gear together and headed out on the bike. Overall I think the transition took me 1:56 according to the official record, but i think they counted a good bit of that run as swim time.
Next came the bike. The bike course was beautiful for the most part(i\'ll get into that in a minute). It started out with a fairly long climb, but nothing overly difficult, and then came to a half mile screaming downhill. From there it was 12 miles of rolling hills, but generally downhill. And all around you were surrounded mostly by sprawling farm land and mountains. It was a beautiful ride. I was taking my time, averaging about 18.5 mph. Faster than I intended, however I was getting passed constantly, it was a pretty fast course. It was very difficult maintaining my pace with everyone else going so fast, but it was a good lesson in mental discipline. At the turn around we encountered the only ugly part of the race. The race course turned around in Canton, and we were treated with an absolutely lovely view of the disgusting paper mill spewing toxic crap into the air. That was the only eyesore of the course. Upon the turn around there were no more rolling hills. It was just about 6 miles or so of steady, not steep climbing. It wasn\'t easy. Eventually the course rejoined the out part and it started rolling a bit so there were at least a few small stretches where one could rest a bit. Eventually we hit what was a screaming downhill on the way out, which means it was a crying uphill. It was the only stretch of the bike course where I actually passed people. I guess it was the only place where my taking it easy paid off. Most people seemed to really be struggling up the hill but I was able to cruise up it fairly easily. Then once hitting the top it was fun. I was able to push over 30 mph while resting and getting ready for the 10k that was coming. I wound up finishing the bike in about 1:20, about 10 minutes faster than I intended, but the course was faster than I thought it would be too, so it was a good ride.
I had a really fast and uneventufl transition from bike to run and I was off. The run course was equally beautiful. It was an out and back up a road that ran right along side a large creek. The first half was all up hill, varying steepness. I really took it easy up the hill and paced just under 12 min miles. There was nothing overly eventful on the run, I ran the whole time except for about 10 second walk breaks when I reached the water stops. When I got to the turn around i was about 35 minutes, and 2:30 min into the race. I had a chance at breaking 3 hours, despite my goal of 3:10(again, finishing slower than), I decided to just let myself go a bit faster and see what I could do. My pace quickened, to a bit under 10 min/miles. I still felt really good, despite the quickened pace. For the final 3 minutes I picked up the pace further cause I just wanted to come in under 3 hours and I did just barely make it. I was kinda dead coming through but recovered quickly and easily could\'ve kept going after a small walk break. I ended up finishing the run in 1:05:55. Which was probably about a 10:40/mile pace, but I had the largest negative split I've ever had in a triathlon. I did the first half in about 35 minutes, and the second half in about 30. Like I said, I felt really good on the second half.
I wound up finishing in 2:59:17. It was a great race and one I intend to do year after year.
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