You Dig?

So I may have mentioned this before but I really don’t like Sunday races. Being that it is the summer I like to have one day where I can get things done around the house and generally chill out. Weekend with Saturday races we get back from the race, eat, sleep and then have a night where we can stay up late (11:30) and then sleep in on Sunday (watch VS. coverage of the tour in July). Sunday usually consists of yard work, some sort of home improvement and then dinner and beers with friends. Sunday races throw a wrench into the whole thing. Saturday I usually don’t want to work to hard so that I have energy for the race on Sunday, which means a lot of laying around thinking about the race.

This Sunday was the Heart of Lake Triathlon in Annandale. It serves as the MN State Championship Race. My plan was to get up at 4:30, leave by 5:00, and get there by 6:15. That would have given me an hour and forty five minutes to get my packet, warm up and make a few visits to the john. I must have turned off the alarm when it first went off cause I finally woke up at 5:15. My first thought was, well I’ll never make it there on time to get a good warm up in, plus I will be really rushed and not in the right mindset, so I might as well go back to sleep. After lying there for fifteen minutes or so I got up, dressed and rushed out the door. I totally flew up there, total drive time less than an hour. The only real warm up that I got in was riding the bike enough to make sure the shifting was on, a SHORT jog, and then it was off to the beach.

Overall the race went pretty well. There are a lot of fast people out there. I ended up like 90th overall and 11th in my age group. The one thing that really had an impact on my overall standing was the transition set up. The bike ad and run out were at the same place and my wave had to run about 250 meters to our racks, and then turn around to run it again to start the run. Just to give you an idea of time impacts, elites who were positioned at the other end from me, their times were like 19-30 seconds. My T2 was 1:45. For those of you unfamiliar with transitions, T2 is the quickest. Overall I felt strong the entire race and had a blast. The whole time I was racing I told myself 2 things: 1) No matter what my time is, it would be better than if I had stayed in bed, 2) When I saw someone that I wanted to run down I would say that John had me more prepared than them, so all I need to do was dig deep to get the extra push I needed. I really, really like my coach. If you are looking to go faster you should check him out.

Heart of Lakes Times
½ mile Swim – 15:44 (1:47 per 100)
T1 – 2:05
21 mile Bike – 54:42 (23.0 mph)
T2 – 1:45
5.3 mile Run – 36:12 (6:50 per mile)
Total Time – 1:50:27