It's taken me forever to finally get this race report up. I've been busy at home trying to get a building project finished and we're finally down to the last step of getting the walls painted.
This was a bit of a crazy race due to the wind at the beginning of the race and rain showers in the bike and run legs. Aside from that I had a great race and was happy with where I ended up. I was shooting for a 5:30:00 time and ended up with 5:15:50. (This was due in part to the swim being shortened. I took 56th out of 174 male participants and 14 place in my age division.
Swim: time of 20:43. The 6:45 a.m. start was pushed back to 7:30 due to the wind. It kept blowing the turn around buoy out of place. They finally decided to leave the buoy out and shorten the swim by only swimming one lap. This shortened the swim from 1.2 down to .7 miles. I figured if we would have swam the extra .5 miles it would have added another 15 minutes to my overall time placing me around 5:30:00. The swim was in semi choppy water with 8 - 11 inch waves in our face swimming out and moving with us swimming back. I felt good on this leg of the race. Because I was swimming without a wet suit (Utah Lake is fairly warm) I got in the water a little late and started in the back of the pack. Positive road kill for the swim. My brothers that were on shore watching said I passed quite a few other swimmers on this leg.
T1: time of 2:13. This was a fairly fast transition and I passed a number of people on the run to the bikes. I think this was because I didn't have a wet suit on.
Bike: time of 2:44:57. I felt really good on the bike and was happy with my time. I ended up with a 20.37 mph average which was good for the conditions. There was a constant wind blowing from the Northwest and during the last 6 miles a thunderstorm came through and dumped a fair amount of rain. This is the section where I fueled up, eating a peanut butter and honey sandwich and an energy bar. They were carried in a bento's bag attached to the top rail of my bike. Road kill for the bike was a positive 4 - 5.
T2: time of 4:48. Very slow transition. Due to rain at the end of the bike all the running gear was wet and took longer to get on. And from biking on wet roads, all all kinds of small gravel and dirt flung up and stuck to my feet and ankles which had to be cleaned off. Also, my T2s tend to take a little longer because of the brace I wear on my right ankle.
Run: time of 2:03:07. I felt pretty good on the run. I was trying for under 2 hours but still felt good with the time. The bike portion of the race was cold due to the rain and low temps, I finally felt warmed up after the first 1.5 miles of the run. It rained a couple of times on the run but not to hard. If anything it was nice not having to run in hot weather. Road kill for the run was a negative 9 - 10.
It was a fun race overall and I may sign up for it again next year. For me this race was a stepping stone towards a bigger goal of competing in the new St George Ironman in May of 2010. One thing this race did was give me confidence in the training guide I'm using, Triathlete Magazine's Essential Week-by-Week Training Guide. Not having done this long of a race event in the past, I felt the training guide did a great job of getting me ready. I followed the level 3 training for Half Ironman distance.
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