I raced the Evergreen International Tri in Bloomington, IL this past weekend. Good race, well run, really nice venue- NO cars on the flat back roads.
swim- 33:20. I suck at swimming. Trained a bunch more this year, a little faster, but mostly I’m just no longer smoked starting
the bike. My wife provides a good outside/non-athlete perspective: my stroke rate is slow. Now I have a winter project…
T1- 1:31. Started to put on arm warmers, decided to HTFU, likely cost 10-15 sec. Shoes on before I moved- gravel in transition, and I’m protective of my feet.
bike- 1:05:59. 22.5 MPH AVG- much better! Passed a ton of people, but the really fast ones got out of the water and were
never seen again. I need to roll with them- see comment on faster swimming… 2 guys passed me- discs, full aero
setups. I’m sensing a switch to full aero front end and some better wheels looming.
T2- 1:17. Too long, need to practice.
run- 45:11. 7:17/mi. This was a big surprise. About a week ago, I did a long ride w/ 3-mi run after, ran under 8/mi for the 1st
time ever. I thought I could MAYBE pull off an 8-min pace, but just ran hard and felt good. All that training is finally paying
off!
My family and I took off, as we were headed to St. Louis to visit family. Results were not up, and I figured I was nowhere near placing. When I checked later, and was shocked to see that I had placed 5th in my AG (30-34), and got an award, plus 59/295 overall. 1st time I’ve ever gotten an award in anything nother than a very short sprint. I’m pumped, and feel good going into the last 7 weeks before IM. Not sure what happened that flipped the switch to faster running (did a t-run at 7:20 this AM after 92 on the bike), but its been 7 years since I was somewhat fast as a runner (relative term- real fast is a 35 min 10-k’er). Now to fix that swim- the next guy in the AG beat me by 7 minutes. On the swim.