Friday, September 4, 2015

The Triathlon Diaries: Colonial Beach Olympic Aquabike

Obviously I need to work on my race update reports...I post them way after the fact...what can I learn if I can't even remember how the race went? However, this one happened in July, so it's a little more fresh in my mind that Challenge Williamsburg was. Let's see how it goes:

Aaron and I met at the shop to load our bikes and stuff up at 3am, leaving at 3:30am to drive the hour and a half to Colonial Beach, VA, a tiny town on the beach where hotels are a rare thing but they have gorgeous sunrises. Taking what I learned from Williamsburg, I took a lot of food with me and ate five scrambled eggs at 3:30am. On the drive, I proceeded to eat two LaraBars, some pretzels and three peaches; much better than the 200 calories I consumed at Williamsburg.

Learning Lessons/Things Improved On:

#1 Good Food: Probably not enough, but it was a significant improvement over my last race, and I didn't see any of it again. #success

#2 Warm-Up: Spent a great 20 minutes in the water warming up. I was the last wave and had a lot of time to prep and just float around to get my muscles ready.

#3 Need Anti-Fog: My open water goggles are great, however fog very easily. I spent some quality time doing breaststroke kick as I cleared out my goggles, not one, not two, but three times. Imagine how fast my swim would've been if I hadn't of had to stop to clear them out.

#4 Kept on Swimming: Listened to my training partner and kept on swimming until I couldn't swim anymore, then stood up and ran to transition.

#5 Bike Course Loops: Are awful because you catch up to everyone who is on their first lap when you are on your second lap and it becomes a passing frenzy.

#6 Long Bike Course: The bike was supposed to be a 40K, we had an additional 3 or so miles tacked on. Not cool, mate, not cool.

#7 Shoes: I neglected to bring shoes (other than cycling shoes) into transition for when I finished my race. I then proceeded to cheer on the run course for Aaron shoeless...in the mud.

Final Thoughts:
Even with the long bike course, I managed to ride 3.5 minutes faster than my ride in Williamsburg, probably due to all the food. I averaged 21.4mph on the bike.
Swim: 23:39
T1: 1:29
Bike: 1:12:59
Overall: 1:38:05 First

Compare my results to the top woman finisher in the triathlon:
Swim: 24:26
T1: 1:22
Bike: 1:10.34
I wasn't far off at all. Goals and work-ons for next year!

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