Friday, April 10, 2009

Lone Star Half-Iron

My second triathlon ever (both half-Irons) is now in the books and with very little training this time around due to my work schedule, I am extremely pleased with how I did in the Lone Star Half-Iron (6:05:34 vs. 5:50:20 in my first one). The best part of the day was having my father-in-law there to watch the entire race. He is a very special person in my life, and I'm glad that he was able to be a part of this. As for the race, I'll just give a brief synopsis with some pictures:

Swim: 43:00 - ok, so there are 609 athletes, the water temperature was 67 degrees, and my wife counted 5 people without wetsuits, me being one of them. I'm pretty warm natured, and figured it would not be a big deal. I have to admit that when I first climbed down off the pier into the water, my first thought was "big mistake", but after swimming about 100 yards out to the start and treading water for about 5 minutes waiting for our wave to begin, I felt fine.

T1: 7:37 - No other way to say it but completely awful. Even though I was comfortable in the swim, I didn't take into account how cold my arms and hands would be, and it took me 3 attempts to try to put on my bike jersey. I finally had to ask the guy beside me if he could pull it down for me.

Bike: 3:06:39 - You just gotta love Texas weather. On the outward half, the wind was out of the south-southwest, and basically in our face the entire way. I kid you not, at just about the turnaround point, a cool front came through and the wind switched to the north-northeast, and the wind was in our face all the way back. I'm still happy with my time and averaged 18 mph, which was about .5 mph faster than my Austin time back in October.

T2: 5:25 - Still not a good transition, but I stopped to shake hands and say hello to a buddy who was watching the transition area and then made a potty stop before I exited the transition area, so that probably cost me about 2:30.

Run: 2:03:28 - In a nutshell, the wind was absolutely brutal during the run, and it was a 4 loop course which makes it even more mentally difficult. The wind was literally gusting 30-40 mph off of the water, and it felt like you were running into a brick wall most of the way.

Final Results: I have pretty much determined that I'm a mid-packer in my age group in these events. I finished 21 out of 38 in my age group. Sure, with more training and way better transitions I might have been closer to 16th or 17th place, but there is no way that I'll ever get down into the top 10-20% like I typically do when I'm in top form in marathons.

1 comment:

FLYERS26 said...

Great job!
I know I could never do a tri, so my hats off to you.
I did a small du a few years ago, and I have much respect for biking after that.
Again Congrats on your time & finishing the TRI !