2011 Peachtree International Triathlon - May 14th, 2011

Hope y'all are having a great weekend.

Well, first race of the year is in the books.  Santa brought it yesterday.  A bit more than I could chew :)  However I did say I was gonna finish with a smile, and I did.

I decided I would go down Saturday morning to Peachtree City as I did not want to waste two hours to get my packet.  Went out with a couple people to hang out with some friends for the evening.  I got in bed by 11:30 and needed to get up at 4:00am.  Not a big deal since I have problems going to bed early the night before a race.

Jumped out of bed when the alarm went off and headed for the kitchen.  Apple slices, banana, peanut butter, and Greek yogurt with strawberries was what I had for breakfast.  Put on my new 2XU suit that Dermantone Labs put together for me!  Fits really well and it worked out great during the race. 

Threw everything in the car (except the bike pump) and headed down to the race.  It was a good thing that i brought both my bike helmet and my aero helmet because Tommy had forgotten his helmet.  Went and got my race packet.  Yay!  Another water bottle, shirt and socks :)  Got all the numbers on and got everything in transition.  Can I say that I LOVED my rack spot this year?  My race number was 48 and I was about 30 yards from the bike exit and re-entry.  Sweet!!!!  No having to run with my bike all the way through transition.  Hung out with Tommy for a few minutes before we needed to get in line at the swim.

Swim

Left a lot to be desired.  Need to get more open water swims in this year, and preferably a few more in my wetsuit before it gets too much more hot.  Most likely the water conditions will be too warm for West Point Lake Triathlon on June 12th.  Felt good for the first half of the swim, and I was sighting really well, which is strange for me, since I sometimes lack in that area.  Began to fade though in the latter half of the swim.  Think it is a combination of the OWS environment (no stops/turnarounds/interval breaks) and swimming in the wetsuit.  Either way, combine that with tired and you get my final swim time.  I will say though, there were three times where I upped the intensity and those catch pads on the forearms work really well.  I could actually feel as if my arms were anchored better in the water which allowed me to move faster.  Traffic got a little heavy at then end of the swim because the super sprint athletes joined up with the rest of us at the end of the swim.

35:04  (1.4mph) - 22/42 in AG

T1

Kind of disoriented after getting out of the water and so I was not running as fast as I would have liked through transition.  Lost my swim goggles somewhere in transition, and I just broke them in a few weeks ago :(  Oh well, someone else's gain, I will just get some new ones.  Thanks Mitchel for the idea of leaving them in my wetsuit sleeve saying they would stay in there ;)  Only other issue, which actually drove up my transition time, was the fact that my left calf kept cramping up so I ended up having to sit down to take my wetsuit off.

2:31 - 28/42 in AG

Bike

Did not average as high of a speed as I wanted to, but I was pleased with my performance on the flats and some of the rollers.  There were a number of race marshals out there and they got quite a few people on penalties after looking at the final results.  I decided since I needed to save some for the run, that if I could not convincingly pass someone and keep moving ahead of them, that I would hang back until I either had an opportunity to move up in the field or not.    Using the new bike and aero helmet seemed to work out well.  Big snag on the way back in around mile 16-17.  Biggest hill (not that there were any that big) on the ride and I go to downshift into the small chainring.  Chain comes off.  So I have to get off of the bike on the hill and put the chain back on.  Took a min and about that time there were a slew of cars that were coming by (open course) that had been trying to get around some of the other riders.  By the time it was all said and one I wasted about two minutes with that.  Tried punching it on the way back in, since after hitting that hill, it was a net decline in elevation back to transition.

1:17:36   (19.3 mph) - 28/42 in AG

Transition 2

Pretty Standard.  Did not try to get off of my bike leaving my bike shoes on it, as I had not practiced that yet this year.  However, being so close to the bike re-entry it was not a problem running in the bike shoes in the grass back to my rack position.

1:34 - 22/42 in AG

Run

Not my best run.  Took about a mile to get going, and then I kept cramping up throughout the run.  I had to do some walking to make the cramps subside.  Finally was able to get some fuel in on the latter half of the run and it helped to dissipate the cramps in my legs.  Also had a GI issue for the first half of the run, and thank goodness there was a porta-john at the halfway point of the run.  Unfortunately since I was in a one piece it was a little harder than normal.  Chalk up about 2-3 minutes of time lost due to that.   Was able to finish the last two miles fairly strong despite the results of the first two thirds of the race.  And like I said, I finished with a smile.

1:03:39  (10:16 pace) - 40/42 in AG

Finish:  3:00:22, 32/42 in AG, 293/438 overall

Tommy did great for his first ever race.  He was in the Clydesdale division and ended up getting 4th in his division in his first race.  Congratulations to him.  I hope he keeps it up.

Would like to thank Kim Bramblett for putting on a great race for the weekend (as usual).  And a big thanks to my sponsor Dermatone for all of their support.  Everyone who I gave product out to was greatly appreciated, and had lots of questions on where to get it from.  And thank you Beth for coming out to cheer me on and take pictures of the event!  I will have some more pictures to post for you guys once I get them from her, and also get my pics from the picture company that worked the race.