Short version:
Weather was perfect… high 60’s & light cloud cover with only a whisper of wind.
Unintentionally PR’d by >4 minutes!!
Overall 2:18:46, 70 of 444 overall, 15 of 53 in AG
Long version:
With Ironman CdA in one week, PARTICIPATION was the word of the day for me for the Blue Lake Oly tri June 14. I was participating so that my tri-club, Ironheads, could field full teams in the Masters & Mixed Masters divisions of the NW Team Competition (requiring 5 competitors per team). Given that, I really didn’t have any goals going into this race except to NOT race it, pace myself and NOT get hurt. I picked up Tom around 6:30 and we headed out to Blue Lake, kibitzing about the pros & cons of Blue Lakes past.
We signed in, set up our transition areas, and basically took a leisurely approach to the start as our 40+ wave is always 20+ minutes behind the actual start of the race. We ran into Seth, talked trash with Brad and basically lolli-gagged around until finally putting on our wetsuits and heading down to the beach. It was then we spotted an obvious bandit lining up to swim with her juniors in purple caps, but the perfect morning had us in a forgiving mood, so we ignored her and filed into the water for the swim start.
When the gun went off, I just found my pace and didn’t hurry anything. I rounded the first turn and found some feet to follow in a nice easy rhythm. I focused on nice long strokes, easy breathing and turned the last buoy for home. Nothing interesting, so exited the water in 27:02, good for 149th place swim split… not bad and 40 seconds faster than when I PR’d at this venue last August. Hmmm… cool!
T1 went well and I got out on the bike. This year, to help train for IM CdA I talked my wife into letting me by a PowerTap power meter (ok, two actually, a training wheel and a race day rig) to hopefully improve my cycling pacing. Yeah, I’ve been known to bike too hard and then struggle in the run. Seriously, it’s happened. So, I monitored my watts and heart rate to an acceptable level of exertion without racing. The funny thing was, I seemed to be passing a bunch of people. I just figured it was due to my old man status and late wave. Then I caught up to an Ironheads teammate at the second turnaround and figured I’d been over-cooking it again. I dialed it back a few watts and then realized, wow!, I have a little tailwind for the trip back to T2. This is cool! About 1 mile out from T2, I lost my patience for a moment and passed a couple of guys who had been yo-yoing each other for miles. I just couldn’t take watching them anymore and rode past definitively arriving pretty fresh at T2. At this point, I hadn’t tracked my time on the bike at all and it wasn’t until later that I found out I rode a 1:01:15… my bike PR on this course by over 2 minutes and good enough for the 33rd fastest split of the day. While this sounds good, I felt very bittersweet about it. I’ve harbored a secret desire to ride this course in under 1 hour and it seems this might have been my chance. Oh well. Maybe at Midsummer?
I made a decent transition in T2 and got out on the run where I pretty quickly fell into what felt like a steady pace. I didn’t have heart rate, so judged my exertion by talking to the volunteers. If I could have a quick convo, I wasn’t pushing too hard. I passed some people and got passed by plenty of runners… some who even had those magic 40-44 numbers on their legs. Somehow, I stayed focused on my pace and didn’t get enticed to misguidedly compete. When I passed the 5 mile marker, I looked at my watch for the first time and realized I would break the 2:20 barrier if I was running an 8 minute mile. Weird. My PR set here last August was 2:23. I just didn’t feel like I was pushing it. So, I cruised in and hit the tape. Run split of 46:35, which I’m sure is my best run here ever, good for 144th split.
Overall, I wasn’t sure what to make of this race, except that it was a perfect day for racing. Cool, calm and a light cloud cover. The wind that was there helped where we needed help. I suppose when you take the pressure of performance off, you really can do some interesting things. I was very pleased with my run, but the bike pacing was also a surprise. It was fun to race with Brad, Tom, Seth and even just for a swim, Linda. All in all, it was a good training day and I felt ready to CdA.
