2007 Pinehurst Triathlon Race Report

Here is my full race report:

First, I want to say that I hope the athlete who crashed on the bike course is okay. At the bottom of a pretty bad hill, there was a 20-30 year old man lying (unconscious?) in the road with scrapes all over his arms and chest. There were two people getting out of cars and several other race participants taking care of him, so I did not stop. I slowed down to pass the scene with care and hoped he was okay.

Official Race Results:

Swim 1500m: 30:03
T1: 1:52
Bike 40k: 1:14:20
T2: 1:22
Run 10k: 1:01:17
Overall: 2:48:51

Bike split was 2nd in my age group! 🙂 And the woman who beat my bike time is way out of my league – she could be in the Masters Elite division and still win 1st place! My age group place was 9th out of 27.

On to my race report…

My alarm went off at 4:45am. I got dressed, loaded my bike and gear bag onto my car, and mixed up a thermos of oatmeal to eat en route. I was on the road by 5:15. It was a 1.5 hour drive to the race site.

I got a little lost on the way. The directions on the Setup Inc site are sketchy, and Google maps is not much better. To top it off, I didn’t see any other vehicles with bikes as I neared the race site. That got me real worried. Usually, once I get close to a race site, I can just follow the caravan of bike-laden cars to the site.

I finally arrived at about 7:10am. Race time was 8am, my wave started at 8:24. The instructions said packet pickup closed at 7am, but I wasn’t too concerned because I think they just tell you that to encourage you not to get there at the last minute. I filled up my tires, greased my chain, loaded up my gear onto my back and rode the 1/2 mile from the parking to the transition area. Not much interesting happened during race prep. I did hit the porta potty about 8:05 am, 20 minutes before my start time.

Swim:

The water temperature was 76 degrees. The air temperate was about 70, and I felt warm. I waited as long as possible to get into my wetsuit to avoid overheating.

The swim was a beach start. That’s where you stand on the beach and run into the water when the horn blows. Even tho I had made a trip to the porta pottie about 20 min earlier, I had to pee again while standing there on the beach waiting for my wave start. So, I peed right in my wetsuit…perhaps you don’t want to be standing next to me at the start of the next race ;-).

During the swim, I had trouble veering to the right…and as in my last race, I ended up about 20 feet to the right of the main pack of swimmers. After the turn around, the same thing happened! The water was calm with no detectable current, so I think it was simply my own stroke inefficiency. I was worried that my time would suck, but kept swimming the best that I could to the finish. My watch said 30 minutes when I exited the water, and I was pleased with that time. One minute faster than last year.

T1:

I had a little trouble spotting my place in transition, despite my usual bright orange marker. There were 4 rows of bikes and I got mixed up which row to run down! I finally spotted it and found my bike. I peeled off my wetsuit which seemed to take forever. I planned to skip the socks this race to save a ten seconds – I had done a 4.5 mile training run sockless and only had minor blisters. So, I thought I’d be just fine. I donned helmet and shoes, and I was off to the bike mount line. At the mount line, I zoomed past several women and did my flying mount. That’s a skill definitely worth developing!

Bike:

The first 20 minutes of the bike I went hard and it felt like hard work. After that, I got into a really good groove where I felt powerful. I chanted “Groove Hip” in my head like I did at my last race. The entire bike course, I tried to get my average speed up to 20 mph. I would get to 19.8, then hit some hills and it would drop to 19.2. I also watched my time on my stopwatch, because I was hoping for a sub 1:15 bike split. As I neared the end of the bike race, I knew I wasn’t going to make it, because my watch said 1:15. When I dismounted, my watch said 1:17. What I didn’t realize until after the race, is that I forgot to hit my lap timer between T1 and the Bike. So, the time on my watch included T1 …in the final analysis, I did beat 1:15 🙂

I had used a different kind of medical tape to strap my energy gels to my bike this time, since the other stuff failed on me in my last race. The new tape was difficult to pull off while riding – and I had to yank so hard that I ended up dropping one of my gels. Luckily, I had tucked an extra into the zipper pocket of my tri suit.

Later on, I reached down to grab my water bottle. The race number attached to my top tube got in my way and knocked the water bottle out of my hand as I grabbed it. Crap – that was my favorite water bottle, too! Having that race number on my top tube has annoyed me several times in the past rubbing against my knees. Making me lose my favorite water bottle is the last straw! I will have to figure out how to attach it to my seat post instead. I’ve seen other bikes done like that, but they didn’t have a tool bag…?

I did not notice passing anyone in my age group on the bike; nor did see anyone in my age group pass me. I guess I was too focused on my own hard effort! Looking at the official results, I think I was in 9th place after the swim, and in 3rd place coming off the bike. If only I could fix my running (sigh).

Run:

Coming in from the bike, I had trouble spotting my rack AGAIN! Next time I’ll have to make a mental note which row I’m in, then find that row and look for my orange marker. I learn something new every race!

My plan for the run was to cover the face of my stopwatch with a piece of white medical tape, so I would not be able to see the time. I didn’t want to be distracted by my slow pace and get myself down again. The strip of tape I had stuck to my water bottle for this task got wet, so it would not stick to my stopwatch. So, I just switched the display to “Time of Day” mode. I did peek at the time of day a few times, and tried to mentally calculate my pace, but fortunately, my brain didn’t work!

My legs were pretty much toast after my hard bike effort. Still, I felt strong on the run, and I ran hard the entire course, and put in my best effort. I saw 4 or 5 women in my age group pass me. One women, with the initials “GY”, passed me last year at the very start of the run. This year, she passed me about half way. She is an amazing runner! I wasn’t able to pass many people at all. However, I did catch up to a guy with a red shirt. The rest of the race, he’d pass me going uphill, and I’d pass him going down. I think we helped each other. I did not stop to walk, even tho I really wanted to. I had a plan for aid stations this time, and stuck to it: only stop for water after downing my gel pack, or if my palm holder bottle goes empty. Otherwise, DO NOT STOP!

At about mile 4, my left foot started to hurt terribly due to not wearing socks. Very bad choice! Each additional step hurt more and more, and I could feel my skin getting torn up. I did a good job ignoring the pain, and I don’t think it slowed me down. Every time I thought of “digging in deeper” to maintain my pace, my mind wandered to how my shoe was digging in deeper to my skin! By the very end of the race, I was in excruciating pain. Definitely not worth the ten seconds I saved by skipping the socks. (see yesterday’s post for picture)

In the last half mile, I glanced behind me to see if any more women were coming up behind me. There was a woman dressed in an all black tri suit about 25 yards back. I picked up my pace, determined not to let her pass. As I approached the finish line, I glanced back again, and she was right on my heels. I went all out and did not let her pass 🙂 You can see her in the run photo!

Post Race:

About 30 seconds after crossing the finish, I heard them announce a name I recognized as someone who beat me at a race earlier this season. ? I had seen her name on the list for this race, and had thought “Oh, I won’t be able to beat her”. It made me happy that I did beat her.

After catching my breath, I looked down at my shoe and saw that blood had soaked through the mesh. I sat down and pulled it off as carefully as I could, but it still hurt like hell as shoe scraped against raw skin. I felt immediate relief getting the shoe off.

Then, I remembered that I hadn’t stopped my stop watch. I switched the display to chrono, and it said 2:50. Wow – I beat last year’s time, by at least a couple minutes! Yeah!

I walked around looking for a medical tent so I could bandage up my foot. I couldn’t find one. I dreaded the 1/2 mile trek back to my car without something to protect my wound. Luckily, I found a clean pair of socks in my bag and put those on. That, along with my flip flops made it bearable.

My official run split is 5 minutes slower than last year. Honestly, I wonder how I did so well last year! The best time I’ve gotten on a 6 mile training run this year is 59 minutes. My all time PR for that run is 58 minutes. Considering that, doing 6.2 miles in 1:01 after my hard bike effort in this race is actually quite good. Still, I really need to get my base running fitness to a more competitive level so I can keep my lead off the bike. There must be some gross inefficiency in my running style. This is something that I must figure out by next season.

I’m really glad I did this race. I had a lot of fun, and I felt great crossing the finish line. And it’s very satisfying to go hard on the bike to make the best bike split possible , and then muddle through the run the best I can. Then, I don’t really care so much that my run time sucked, because my bike time was GREAT!

Race Photos: