Overview
My first ever podium! One of my objectives for the year was to make it onto the age-group podium at one of my local races. I did it at my first attempt. Not a huge field (7 in age group) but I bettered my PR on this course by over 15 minutes.
Preparation
In the two weeks since Ironman 70.3 New Orleans where I got dehydrated and was under-recovered from Texas 70.3, I've limited my training to relatively easy workouts with some short effort intervals. On Saturday, I rested and hydrated .. and pee'd all day ...
Swim
Despite the very threatening forecast, the weather was almost perfect for the race. Warm, breezy but no rain by race start. When watching the Sprint and early Olympic swim waves depart I noticed there seemed to be a current pulling swimmers to the right on the outleg. I made a mental note. True enough when I started the swim I had to adjust to swim to the left of the buoy to maintain a straight-ish course. Otherwise I felt the swim went OK and feeling strong turning into the final leg I kicked a little harder. Here started my first problem - soon I started to sense the onset of cramp. Exiting the swim, the run was not over the compacted sand that I'd seen prior to the race, but now fully soft sand (after several hundred others had run across it).
Swim time: 0:34:53.1 - slightly disappointing.
T1
As I got into transition and peeled off my wetsuit, cramp kicked in fully in my right calf! I sat for a few seconds while it passed and gingerly got my socks and bike gear on.
T1 time: 0:03:38.0 - slow due to long sandy run and cramps
Bike
Exiting on the bike was necessarily slow and I took the first few miles easy to give my calf time to recover. Then turning onto the main road I discovered pre-race comments about the chip seal calming down since last year were, erm, WRONG. It was a rough as last year. Under trees it was positively brutal on a tri bike. This now counts as a big put-off for this race for me. I'll need some other very strong motivation to come back. I used my (now working) power meter to keep my bike effort under control - 180-200 watts most of the way. Otherwise the bike leg was uneventful. I finished feeling strong but was still worried about what effect that cramp was going to have on my run.
T2 time: 1:12:05.1 (20.6mph) - slightly slower than my Galveston speed?? think I need to be putting lots more training in on the bike to get this improved.
T2
No issues. No cramp. Grabbed my hat and number and put it on while running.
T2 time: 0:01:11.6 - PR in T2 in any Olympic or 70.3 race.
Run
Started the run at a steady pace to see how I felt. All good. Pushed it along. Used the hills. Ran the inside of all the corners (Garmin said I ran 6.15 miles so that clearly works). After the last turn, with approx 2 miles left I upped my pace and pushed all the way to the line. Crossed the line fast and feeling strong.
Run time: 0:52:24.8 - a 10K PR in any tri or run race! Delighted with that. Fully twelve and a half minutes faster than my run last year (when I committed to myself to fix my running!)
Race time: 2:44:12.8. My Olympic PR by 15 minutes. Not quite close enough to the 2:30ish I was hoping for. Lots more work on swim and bike to get there.
This was enough to put my 3rd of 7 in 45-49 Men for my first ever podium. And 7th in Male Masters out of 31 and 29th of 69 overall men. A sufficiently big improvement over last year to be satisfied but definitely more room to improve!
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