I went up to McKinney Texas this past weekend to participate in an Olympic relay triathlon. It was an important weekend for me for a couple of reasons: firstly it was the site of my first triathlon just one year ago and secondly I was doing the relay with my niece and father. It was exciting for me as all I had to do was the run leg, and I could find out how much, if any, my fitness and speed had improved over the past 6 months.
While the relay race wasn’t until Sunday, I had also registered for a 1500M swim race on Saturday. I figured I could see how fast I could swim when I didn’t have to save anything for the last 2/3 of a triathlon. When it came down to race time I ended up not swimming for a number of reasons, including my distaste for swimming in cold-ish water without a wetsuit, and the deep water start (again sans wetsuit).
 | I stood on the side and watched my niece race the 750M, her first real open water race. As you can see there weren’t a ton of people in the race, but this is very different than racing in a pool with your own assigned lane! |
It was an odd preparation weekend for me, mainly because I was only running, and didn’t expect to start until 9:30 or so. Compounding this was I my wife, my personal fan base and support team, wasn’t in attendance. Fortunately these two issues worked together well as I took up the role of spectator coordinator.
This was my father’s first foray into the multi-sport arena in a number of years, and I think both parents would agree that while they had been to several of my races, everything changes when you have some skin in the game.
Once the race started, my Dad and I watched our wave complete the first of two loops. Once several of them had headed out on their second loop we returned to the transition area to get ready for the bike leg. We were supposed to get notified that Andrea (our swimmer) was headed in our direction so that we were really ready and not standing around day dreaming. We got the call, with about 10 seconds advanced notice, so we were still fumbling with gear and didn’t see her arrive until she was trying to strap on the timing chip!
My Dad took off, so I spent a few minutes tending to Andrea. Looking at how gassed she was I realized that I really held back on the swim. I’ve never, been that tired looking after a swim. I’ve got a lot to learn!
The bike course was four laps of about six miles each. We positioned ourselves at the end of the lap and waited. Dad waved as he passed by the first time. The second time we got a nod and by the third time I don’t think he even noticed us. I could tell he was hurting but giving it his best shot. I left the spectators to warm up and position myself for the chip transfer.
I thought I saw him ride by on the last section of the course, but didn’t see him coming into transition. Evidentially he dismounted early and had to walk an extra block to get to me. When I spotted him I ran over, took the chip (which was probably illegal) and took off running, all before he got to our transition area.
The run started out almost immediately going uphill. Since I hadn’t just come off the bike it didn’t bother me that much, but it did make it difficult for me to figure out my pacing. We wound through parking lots, through underpasses, and up and down lots of hills. I was breathing pretty hard when I hit mile marker #1, and still hadn’t gotten my pace going. The hills (and wind) were so difficult I couldn’t tell if I was breathing hard from them or from the run itself. I checked my watch and was just over an 8 minute mile pace, much slower than I’d hoped for, but I also wasn’t expecting this difficult of a course.
Disgusted, I decided not to check my watch again, and just enjoy the run. I flew by a lot of people, and felt guilty for it since they had all done much more than I had up to this point. That guilt probably made me run harder, knowing I should have been much fresher than all of them. The turnaround was at an aid station. Fortunately it wasn’t very crowded as there wasn’t much room, especially for the pace I was trying to keep.
I hit the last aid station, which was a mile from the end/beginning. I checked my watch; 40 minutes elapsed. I tried to calculate my finish time, but thought I had 1.2 miles left instead of 1 mile. At an 8 minute/mile pace that put me at around 50 minutes. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. Then I was caught from behind by some young kid, probably someone running the sprint, because he was really flying. I stayed with him for a while, even caught up to him, but we hit the really hilly section and he pulled away.
All of a sudden the finish line was there. I did one last check of my watch and it was 46 minutes. I had run the last mile at a six minute/mile pace, hitting the goal time I’d set for myself and smashing my PR from just 8 months ago by 3 minutes. It was a VERY hard race and I think I answered the challenge.
 | In Summary, all three athletes did as well or better than they had expected. Andrea pulled in a 30 minute 1500M with only one workout a week, and my Dad beat his expected time by 20 minutes, riding much faster than he ever had in training. Best of all two more people have been exposed to the thrill of triathlons. My goal for next year is to get them both to do the entire race for themselves! |
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