Last time I did this race was four years ago. I was in much better shape than I am now and it showed, especially in the run. The reason I signed up for this race was because a friend of mine was doing it for the first time. He was looking for someone to show up and race it with him.
Turned out to be a perfect weather day and the only question was the swim going to be a wetsuit legal swim. As it turns out the water came in just under the legal temp for wetsuits, so everyone was pretty happy about that.
The Swim
The swim is a counter clockwise course in Lake Denison. Since the water was so warm it was kind of hard to push hard during the swim with the wetsuit on. Overall the swim was pretty uneventful. I just tried to get out toward the front of my group and keep a strong pace. My swim time was 23:34 and my average pace was 1:30/100 yards. I was pretty happy with that.
The Bike
Going into the race I was thinking if I could hold 20 mph I would be happy. A few years ago I was up over 22 mph but I’m not anywhere close to the condition I was in back then. I could only remember parts of the ride so I was kind of going on feel, and was staying right around 20 for the first half of the ride. Luckily the back half of the ride is flat and pretty fast. My bike time was 1:02.14 for an average of 21.2 mph
The Run
I was kind of dreading the run as I have only recently started to build up my miles. For the run I was thinking about where I would probably see my friend Brian. I knew we would be pretty close on the swim, but on the bike I would have him by quite a bit. I thought maybe I would have a 2 mile gap on him. So, since it is an out and back course I thought I might see him when I hit mile 4 and he was at mile 2. I actually thought he might make up some time on me during the run as he was telling me his times when he goes running. However, most of those times are on the treadmill and that doesn’t translate very well to being outside and having done a swim and a bike first.
Starting out on the run I was just trying to get my breathing under control for that first mile and settle in to a rhythm. I saw another friend Steve Bosic coming in to finish as I was heading out. He was pretty much killing it. As the run went on I started feeling better and was actually picking up the pace each mile. I saw Brian right about where I expected to see him on my way back.
My run time was 49:19 for a 7:58 per mile pace. Looking at my Garmin the last couple of miles were at 7:40 pace. While this was much slower than a few years ago I was pleased that I could get it down under 8 minutes per mile after pushing it pretty hard on the bike.
Overall I was really happy with the race for the amount of training that I had been able to get in.