The Jerse

The race this weekend was fantastic. Liz and I rolled up to NJ on Saturday for packet pick up with a pretty good sized group of former TNTers and friends. For some reason still unknown to me I was assigned #3 as my race number; normally the low numbers go to pros or elite amateurs. I had to keep telling people that this was in no way a prediction of my race results. It looks like almost every guy in my age group had a really low number, so it must have been some combination of wave assignment and when you signed up or something. Like last year we stayed with CH's grandmother about 40 minutes away and enjoyed a great pre-race meal and a good night's sleep. At least until the crazy thunderstorm woke us up at 4:00 AM. There was constant lightning and thunder for about 45 minutes so I never got back to sleep. Amazingly, the storm line completely missed the race course and it was bone dry when we got there. Parking was a bit of a nightmare so we snuck into a remote lot and rode our bikes in just in time to set up transition before it closed.

My wave was #1 in the water (again), so I had zero warm up aside from the jog from transition to the swim start. The lake is small and by this time in the summer has not chance of being wetsuit legal (86 degrees this year). I think I actually prefer cooler water, not just because of the wetsuit factor but because I don't feel like I'm going to get too hot. I felt good in the swim but my time doesn't really reflect it (only knocked off 00:21 from last year when I felt I had a terrible swim). I was breathing pretty hard the whole way, but I figured that was because of no warm up. It usually takes me 500-600 meters in the pool to really get in to a groove, and we were back on dry land by then in the sprint. The run up to transition was a long one (my bike was far from the swim exit, close to bike exit); nothing notable about it, probably took a little too long getting my shoes on and fumbling with my helmet.

The bike course is only 11.5 miles (down from 13.x last year), so you just had to hammer the whole way. I've been making some good improvements on the bike since Mooseman (the Sunday rides with the Bike Rack have kept me honest) and it's starting to show. I ended up averaging 22.5 MPH compared to 20.8 last year. After adjusting my bar height a few weeks ago I've had no issues with shoulder pain and have been able to put down some power to the pedals. I rolled into transition feeling pretty good. T2 was uneventful, but slower than I should have been. Again it was a long run out from my rack.

The run last year was a 5K PR for me last year, and it happened again this year (I really need to run a standalone 5K to see what my baseline is; I haven't run one since Thanksgiving on a really hilly course). I focused on keeping a steady pace for the first half, noted where the 1/2 mile to go point was, and planned on pushing it from there to the end. As always, some super speedy runners went blowing by, but only about a dozen this time ;). Ended up with a 24:13 run, 00:40 better than last year. After the lack of run training this spring and summer I was hoping for 25:00, so it was a nice surprise.

My final time was 1:07:35. Overall that was 9/47 in my age group, 59/549 for all men, and 68th overall in the race (up from 100th overall last year). All in all it was a good day. Everybody seems to have had a great race. The DC Tri Club dominated the East Coast championships again, and the the Bike Rack multisport team had a good representation. This is shaping up to be a big East Coast event (2500 racers this year in the sprint and olympic races). We'll be back next year for sure!