Today was the Call To Honor triathlon in Boxford. This is the 3rd year of the event that honors the memory of a local resident and State Trooper who died in the line of duty. His family comes and races as relay teams and presents the medals to all the winners. They are a very nice family and very involved in the community espeically the town beach where the race is held.<\/p>\n
The race itself is a very short, especially the run. Most triathlons the athlete will spend 10% on the swim, 50-55% on the bike and the rest on the run. This even though, It is about 10% 85% and 15%, so if you are a strong biker it really helps.<\/p>\n
The weather for race day was very nice, a little bit chilly on the bike ride over, but it warmed up nicely and the water in Stiles was at least 70 degrees.<\/p>\n
The Swim<\/p>\n
I wore a one piece tri outfit today. A DeSoto Liftfoil speedsuit. This is the first time that I have ever worn one of these for a triathlon. This year the swim seemed to be a bit longer than it was the last two years. I think they actually measured it out. My time was a little bit slower than last year and I was 13th overall in the swim. I knew that I had fallen behind some of my fellow age groupers that were wearing wetsuits, but not by much and I figured I was behind maybe 3 of them.<\/p>\n
T1<\/p>\n
My transition was pretty good, but not as fast as I had hoped. I really wanted it to be under a minute, and part of that expectation was that I wasn’t wearing socks and I didn’t have to change out of a wetsuit or put any other clothes on. It was glass, helmet, shoes, bib number and go. I think I need to learn to mount the bike with the shoes clipped in.<\/p>\n
The Bike<\/p>\n
My expectation was to average over 20 mph on the bike and I did that. At least according to my Garmin GPS I did that. It said that I averaged 20.9 mph. My official time was 30:20, which I think was about a minute faster than last year. So, that wasn’t bad, but it would have been nice to break 30. I guess there is always next year. The only problem I had on the bike was when I slowed down to take the left onto Herrick Rd. I got up out of the saddle to accelerate and I got a massive cramp in my left calf. I had to stretch it out before I could start riding hard again and lost some time there.<\/p>\n
T2<\/p>\n
This transition was better than the first, but again I had trouble getting one of my bike shoes off, so that was a little disappointing. You would think I had never taken my shoes off before. I need better focus.<\/p>\n
The Run<\/p>\n
The run started out a little slow because of the cramp in my calf, but about a half mile in I started to feel better and was able to push more. After the turn it is mostly down hill and I really started to push a little more and wish I had my Garmin on to see some splits. My pace was around 7:30 for the run. Again this was about a minute better than last year.<\/p>\n
My overall time ended up being just about a minute better than last year because the swim was a little bit longer and I was a little faster on the bike and run. I ended up placing 8th overall and 4th in my age group. The age group placing was a little bit disappointing. I really had hoped to be higher after looking at last years results, but I guess it is all who shows up that day. 4 out of 34 isn’t bad I guess. An interesting note is that 6 of the top 10 were in my age group and 8 of top 15. Tough age group to place in.<\/p>\n
Well, that wraps up the triathlons for this season. Time to focus on getting better for next year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today was the Call To Honor triathlon in Boxford. This is the 3rd year of the event that honors the memory of a local resident and State Trooper who died in the line of duty. His family comes and races as relay teams and presents the medals to all the winners. They are a very…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race","category-triathlon","tag-triathlon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeeh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}