Reeds Lake Triathlon 2008

Background: Reeds Lake last year was my second triathlon ever, and it is a race that I love for many reasons: The course is awesome, it's in my hometown, I went to college less than 2 miles from the race course (Calvin), my family almost always does very well at this race (Brad White, Jenny (Los) White, and Bruce Los), and because of its convenient location I get an awesome cheering section (20+ people at a sprint). This season I've trained a fair amount and did 9-10 races this year, including Steelhead which is the longest distance I've done yet. Since Steelhead (Aug 2nd) I've done almost no training due to a partially torn left hamstring (from the bike), one easy 20 mile bike ride and at most 2 runs per week (4-9 miles total). I have no excuse for not swimming more other than the fact that I suck at it and don't enjoy it.

My goal for the race this year was to improve on my time from last year, and if possible beat my friend Alex that I had recruited to race his first triathlon (we are about even on the bike but he's a much better runner). Given my hamstring injury and lack of real training for a month I was uncertain about the likelihood of either goal.

800m swim: The water was warm and fairly clear, a pretty fog was lingering over the water and the sun was just starting to rise over the lake. It was a perfect morning! Since I am a weak swimmer, I started off the back and to the outside of my wave to avoid getting swam over too many times in the first 100m. I quickly fell into as much of a "rhythm" as I can get into and kept reminding myself that this was only a warm-up for the bike and run. Out of the water in PR 19:59 I can't complain about my time since I hadn't been swimming much for the past month.

18.15 mile bike: Given that my hamstring injury was from biking too hard at Steelhead my strategy for this race was to just flatten the course as much as possible and stay away from the pain threshold very carefully to avoid aggravating the injury. During the race I felt like I stuck to this strategy very well and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for my bike execution, I went easy up the hills, harder down them, and maintained a comfortable pace without slacking off completely. Having forgotten my PT head unit at home I did not get a power file for this race so I have no objective means of knowing how well I actually did at flattening the course.

4.9 mile run: My plan for the run was to hopefully run around a 7:15/mile pace, but since I hadn't run this fast in over 2 months I wasn't too optimistic that it would work out that way for me. This leg of the race felt slow to me because I really felt good and was not feeling much pain from my legs. Throughout the race I kept working at increasing my pace because I was feeling too good and wasn't hurting nearly enough. Since he didn't catch me on the bike I was fully expecting my friend Alex to catch me in the first 2 miles of the run since his plan was to run a sub-6:30/mile pace. I pushed through to the finish feeling strong, but I still felt too good, I felt like I could have run 2-3 more miles at that pace without suffering much. Because I hadn't turned my stopwatch on until a few minutes into the swim I didn't know what my finishing time was until I looked at the results.


NOTE: The bike course was about 1 mile longer in 2008 than it was in 2007.

2007
Clock Time 1:55:09
Chip Time 1:55:09
Overall Place 444 / 1011
Gender Place 366 / 696
Division Place 30 / 51
Time Back 35:53
Swim Rank 851
Swim Time 21:14
T1 Time 01:55
Bike Rank 401
Bike Time 51:29
T2 Time 02:00
Run Rank 367
Run Time 38:27

2008
Clock Time 1:46:17
Chip Time 1:46:17
Overall Place 139 / 989
Gender Place 122 / 666
Division Place 16 / 56
Swim Rank 637
Swim Time 19:59
T1 Time 01:51
Bike Rank 124
Bike Time 49:40
T2 Time 00:56
Run Rank 89
Run Time 33:48