Lake Murray: A Fun Day

Not a fast day for me, but sometimes you have to just enjoy being there. It was great seeing a lot of my friends from the Northwest YMCA, Strictly Running and it was even better to see my friend Nick have a stellar race, which led to an age group win.

As far as my race goes, it was the race I pretty much deserved. With all that is going on, I have not put in the training, so therefore, my race results can not be expected to break new ground. I hate that I have allowed myself to trail behind folks who I normally should be racing with or beating. They have put in the work, so they deserve the success they get. Overall, there were no major mistakes or catastrophies in today's race. It was a solid effort for the preparation I put into it.

The swim was the worst part. It was the choppiest water I have ever raced in. I even saw a few white caps. Steve Rudnicki, who was out on the kayak lifeguarding told me he pulled 5 people out of the water. I just swam along and tried to stay straight and stay afloat. My swim needs to improve, it really is starting to drag the rest of my race down.

I felt good on the bike. In the end, it was probably the strongest part of my race. My average speed was at 22 MPH, which for me is pretty good. Nobody that started in my wave passed me. The only people that went by me were those really strong cyclists who started in the waves behind me, like my friend Nick who ended up averaging a SMOKING 24 MPH on his new Scott Plasma. At the end, my legs got a little wobbly and I decided to start saving my legs for the run in the last mile and a half.

When I got out on the run, my legs were kind of wobbly from the bike, as to be expected. It seemed like I was in 10k Olympic distance race mode. It was not until the second half of the race where I started to run like it was a 5k race. This is my worst run leg I have had at this distance. My training has not been sub-18 minute 5k material, or even sub-19 minute material for that fact. It is time to get back out on the track and suffer a little bit.

Overall, I finished in 52nd place (out of 259 male participants) and 6th in my age group (out of 41 male participants). Here are the numbers:

Swim-750M T1 Bike-16 miles T2 Run-5k
15:12 1:17 43:11 1:07 20:49

I really enjoyed spending the day with my friends like Nick, the folks at the YMCA and Strictly Running. My favorite part of Triathlon is the many positive friendships I make. There are not too many things you can do where you can live somehwere new and already accumilate this many friends. Most of my friends had great races and it was fun to watch their hard work pay off. They better watch out, because when the fall races roll around, I will be kicking their butts! As a bonus, the post-race food was from my favorite restaurant-Moe's!