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Race Result

Racer: Mike Tine
Race: Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon
Date: Saturday, May 3, 2008
Location: Huddleston, VA
Race Type: Triathlon - Sprint
Age Group: Male 35 - 39
Time: 1:11:48
Overall Place: 30 / 404
Age Group Place: 5 / 44
Comment: First race of season, need to train more/better!



Race Report:



Swim: 11:02
T1: 2:08
Bike: 35:33
T2: 1:01
Run: 22:06

Overall, I was happy with my race given my current level of fitness. The two parts that disappointed me were T1 and the Run. More on that later.

We stay at the cabins in the park for this race. They are stupendous and a phenomenal deal for what they are. This time it was cabin #8 where the last two times were cabin #18. In general this one was better, but the privacy of #18 was better for locking up bikes. With just Karen and me in the cabin this time, though, there was plenty of room to keep the bikes inside.

Swim: 63 degree water. It felt very cold when first diving in, but was fine after that. Thankfully, Karen and I did a couple of brief warmups before the event actually began. The swim looked a little shorter this year than usual, but I might just be remembering incorrectly. I was in the 5th wave. I felt I had a strong swim overall. It was a bit difficult since the 3rd and 4th waves created walls of people around which I needed to swim, but I did well sighting and really didn't experience anything too bad.

T1: The run up from the water was uneventful as usual. I was a bit out of breath, but nothing too abnormal. Shoes took a bit longer than usual to get on, likely because of cold hands. Aero helmet has clip-on ear guards to make it more aero. One popped off while putting on the helmet so I took off both and went on without them. I ran through the ENTIRE transition area because of the location of my rack. Different from before, everyone was running up the hill that started as soon as you could mount your bike. I chose to mount. Wrong move. My foot slipped and I hit my....delicate areas...hard on the seat. I ran the rest of the way up, mounted the bike, and dealt with a bit of pain for the next few miles. Slow and painful, not the way I wanted to start my ride!

Bike: Great on the downhill sections, especially on the winding parts. Bike handling skills help in triathlon! Hard on the uphill sections. I haven't trained nearly enough on the bike, and what I have done has been mostly flat. A girl from VT passed me on every single uphill and I passed her back on every single downhill. I eventually got away from her towards the end (although she ran by me), but that was frustrating especially since her bike wasn't anything special.

T2: Uneventful. Could have gone faster, but not by much.

Run: Wow, was I out of breath from the beginning. My legs weren't overly tired from the bike, but I had no breath and my HR was already in the 170's. I dialed it back a bit and just did the best I could. I tried to focus on turnover and foot strike, but that didn't help much. Any slight uphill killed me. I didn't look at my watch for a split, but I'm guessing I was above 7:30 pace for the first mile. I picked up a little before the turnaround, and then continued to ramp up speed as I neared the finish line. Several people from my AG passed me (I would have likely been 2nd place in my AG and top 10 overall if my run was the same time as past years). Suddenly, though, with about 1/2 mile to go, I noticed that one of them was in sight! I picked up the pace just enough to catch him with 100m to go. From that point, I opened it up hoping to dishearten him. It worked. I beat him by about 5 seconds and could barely stand when I crossed the finish line. It felt good to dig in like that, but I wish I could have done it for the whole run. Oh well, I know I need to work on my 5k and 10k speed again. Mostly, endurance should help this.

I was able to recover a little, grab a banana and bottle of water, and then went to cheer in Karen. She did great! I'll let her do her own report though. For the time being, I enjoyed the weekend at SML and am always happy to start the season with this race.