LIFETIME TRI, MINNEAPOLIS, JULY 11 2015

TRANSITION PRE-RACE

VENUE:  Perhaps the largest, most heavily promoted, competitive triathlon in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St Paul.  Almost 1500 finishers in 7 separate categories in 3 distances: super sprint, sprint, international. An urban triathlon where you swim in Lake Nokomis, bike on city parkways, and run on city park paths.  Weather was near perfect, but was humid which is typical for Minnesota in the summer.

PRE-RACE:  I was entered in the sprint race because I wanted to get an assessment of my condition and did not want a longish run as I was gingerly improving my run fitness in spite of my cranky knees. Sprint races are not my forte (I'm 85 % slow twitch as measured by muscle biopsy) but I did not want to get an injury setback from a long run. To make a distinction from the super sprint swim, the sprint distance swim was increased to .47 miles, while the bike was slightly over 15 miles and the run a 5K.  I had perused the entry list within my age category and noticed that the prior year winners were entered, as well as Duane Millslagle, a local fast athlete, who had aged-up into the 65-69 age group.  Since the prior winning times were not impressive, I imagined that Duane would be my main threat.  He is a faster swimmer than I and had a faster run pace at the USAT National Duathlon Championships three weeks earlier. However, he raced the sprint with shorter runs while I raced the standard distance.  My strategy was to catch and pass him on the bike and build a cushion prior to the run.

RACE: Because of the numerous races within a race, and with only one transition area, everyone had to vacate the transition at the same time resulting in some long waits for various wave starts.  Because the weather was benign, this was not a big issue. But, for example, my wave didn't start until 8:15 while we had to exit the transition at 6:30. The start was a blend of wave and time trial.  Age groups were clumped into the same wave, and two athletes from each wave were sent off in 3 second intervals first passing over a timing mat.  This worked well to ease the swim frenzy that would normally exist compared to a 1500 athlete short distance triathlon with either a large wave or mass start.

SWIM FINISH

I positioned myself near the back of my wave so that if it came down to a sprint run finish, I most likely would have some start seconds on whoever I was sprinting against.  I swam what I thought was a decent pace but still saw a few swim caps come out of the water ahead of me.  Since our wave included all males over 60, I was not sure exactly how many I had to catch on the bike segment.

BIKE START

The biking surface was a mixed bag, with some new pavement and some of the old patched pot-holed pavement that had discouraged me from racing this venue in the past.  I did not need a bike crash and the parkway roads are serpentine and narrow as they follow Minnehaha creek through residential Minneapolis.  I finally caught Duane at about mile 5, passed him, only to be re-passed, only to pass, only to be re-passed, etc.  I knew that I did not want this to be a 5K run race so I upped my power at about mile 10 and finally was able to create a gap that I held into transition.

I was running scared, had forgotten to tighten my speed laces on my shoes, but did not want to stop and waste valuable seconds so I ran in somewhat floppy shoes.  At the turnaround on a short out-n-back I saw that I had what I estimated to be less than a 30 second lead with 2 miles to go.  By this point I was soaked in sweat from running in the humid air but did not want to take any water at the aid stations for fear of losing valuable seconds.  After all, this was just over an hour event and the body, if properly pre-race hydrated, can put out that long without additional fluids.

DUANE and BEN

RESULT: I finished with Duane someplace behind me and after checking with the timing tent saw that I had finished first in the 65-69 age group by about 1 minute.  Overall 26th out of 648 finishers.  Checking my bike computer afterwards I saw that I averaged 233 watts and 23 mph, on a serpentine, pot-holed, but relatively flat course on a calm day. According to the official results,  my run and swim were so-so: 7:30/mile run pace, 1:50/100yd swim pace.  My overall time was 1:20:09.  Winning time 1:12:31.

Now I'm trying to refocus on some more serious endurance training for my next race, an Ironman.  Only a few of those left in me both mentally and physically. I've raced at Kona 6 times, reaching the podium twice (5th and 2nd), trying to get there for lucky seven.....