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Race Result

Racer: Keith Bohnenberger
Race: Shenandoah Valley Sprint
Date: Saturday, June 5, 2010
Location: Luray, VA
Race Type: Triathlon - Sprint
Age Group: Male 40 - 44
Time: 1:39:49
Age Group Place: 6 / 17
Comment: David Glover puts on another great race



Race Report:



Shenandoah Valley Sprint
750 meter swim (820 yards)
16.5 mile bike
5K run

The Race:
For those of you who haven't done one of David Glover's races in Luray, you need to make a point of getting one on your race schedule. This year, David added the Shenandoah Valley Sprint to the list of races he directs. It's the same race as the Luray Sprint which occurs in mid August.
As always, David did a great job directing the race.

The swim is in Arrowhead Lake. The bike course is beautiful and has a little bit of everything. A couple tough but relatively short climbs, a few long fun downhills and a long false flat that seems like it takes much longer than it should. The run is an out and back that doesn't seem like it should be as hard as it is.

My Race:
I used to laugh at the iron men and woman who would say that sprints were hard. I'm no where close to an iron man but I now understand what they're talking about. I'm now in good enough shape to push a spring pretty hard. Add in some hills and some humidity and you end up with a hard race.

Swim: 14:29
The water temp was wetsuit legal so I decided to go with the wet suit. It was a bit warm but not too bad. I've been taking the Master's swim class at the Reston YMCA with Claudia Cortes. It's working, I'm getting faster. I was talking with Claudia a few days before the race and asked her what my goal should be. She said, I should be able to pull off a 1:30/100yard pace, maybe less with a wet suit. It looks like I have some more work to do to get there. I only pulled off a 1:46/100 yard pace. That was good enough to put me 4/17 in my age group which is much higher than I normally place. In general I felt good during the swim. My stroke felt good, I thought I was sighting well and I thought I was pacing myself well. I just need to keep working on it to get faster.

T1: 2:17
It's a bit of a run from the lake up a bunch of steps to T1. On my walk up the steps I heard someone yell, "run." It was Charles Barnes, a fellow RAT. It's hard to run up steps in a wetsuit after a hard 750 meter swim but I was near the top of the steps when I heard him yell and took his advice. The rest of T1 was uneventful.

Bike: 57:05
It's always hard for me to transition from the swim to the bike. This race was no exception. After a quick exit from the park you hit the first climb. After the climb, I started feeling better and started pushing the bike a bit harder. It's a tough course, but it's really pretty and has some fun fast down hills. The entire bike was a bit of a struggle but I was pushing it hard and trying to last as long as I could before fellow RAT Bradley Schultz would pass me. As I was battling off the long false flat, he caught me. I tried to keep him in site for the last 4 miles or so of the bike ride but as I hit the last hard climb he was out of site. As I finished the bike, I made a mental note that I have some serious work to do before I come back to this course for the August Luray Olympic distance race.

T2: 1:07
I fumbled with my bike shoes a bit longer than I would have liked, but was a bit surprise to still see Bradley still in transition. Bradley was doing this race and the Reston Sprint as a good training weekend for Eagleman. As I ran passed, I told him to quick monkeying around and get moving.

Run: 24:53
I'm never happy with my run time on this course. The course is hard but not too hard. It seems like I should be able to go faster but I just can't. I think a lot of it has to do with the challenging bike course. This day I think some of it had to do with the humidity. I just couldn't get my breath. It felt hard to breath. I ran slow up the hills and tried to push it faster down the hills. I definitely wanted to walk a couple times but that's the thing about sprints, you just have to keep convincing yourself to hold the pace because it's not that much further. It felt good crossing the finish line and putting my first race of 2010 in the books.


Total: 1:39:49


It was great seeing a bunch of RATs out there. As always, David put on a great race. Thanks to Bradley Schultz for driving and congrats to Brady and Kona Kev for putting up some crazy fast times.