Jack's Generic Tri & A Setback

I did Jack's Generic Tri on Monday morning. Nothing special since it's a local sprint tri. It was going to be interesting though since I had a tough weekend of training. I got up and got ready for the race. I was thinking about cleaning off my bike since it was nasty, but it was going to get dirty at the race anyways. I got to the race site and set up everything. I saw some of my friends and chatted with people. I only had 3 RP's with two of them at the race site. I found Meg and hung out with her a bit. We went to do a bit of a warmup swim. Meg tackled Charles and caused him to drop his goggles into the water. While Meg tried to find the goggles, I went and swam an easy 250yds or so. Then, it was time to start.

My wave went off first and that was nice. I lined up to the outside like I usually do in races. A lot of other people lined up there as well. The gun went off. It was crazy. It was just a clusterfuck. It really seemed like no one was moving anywhere. People were flailing their arms, but weren't going anywhere. I got in the water and I kept getting hit. People were swimming on top of me and I was swimming on top of people. I went out right more to get away from people and that helped. This flogging by people was good because I think it was good prep for IMFL. I went out and turned left at the buoy. Well, Noah was swimming in the inside of me and when I took a left, he kept swimming straight for at least 5 yards past the buoy. Well, I swam over him, pushed him out of the way, and kept going. As usual, I kept passing people towards the end of the swim and that makes me feel good. I tried drafting off of people, but I always end up on some feet that are slower than me. I usually rest behind them for a few strokes and then keep going past them. As I was reaching the end of the swim, I picked up the pace a bit. I found one guy that was slightly slower than me. I went on the inside of him and tried to get to the first buoy before him. Well, I kind of made it. I tried to push him over since I was mostly in front of him. Well, he kept trying to swim on top of me. I started kicking pretty hard to try to get him off of me. Well, a foot landed in some soft tissues on this guy and then he was gone. Whoever you are, sorry for kicking you in the nuts, man.

I headed into transition and was pretty tired. It was a fairly quick transition and nothing special or that I could've done better. Then, I was on the bike. It took a bit to get into my shoes. I headed up the first hill. I kept going on the bike and my heart rate was kind of high. At this point, I already had dead legs. Actually, I had dead legs on the swim so this was going to be an interesting race. I kept going and I was going pretty quickly. I played leap frog with the eventual female winner and some other guy. I kept pushing though. At one point, I checked my computer to see how far I was into the race. I thought I was 8 miles or so. I was at 4. Shit. I slowed down a bit because I was going too hard. The roads were in pretty good condition and this is worth noting because I heard that they were a little rough. They weren't bad. There were a few hills but nothing too bad until we got back on the I35 access road. That was the toughest hill the entire course.

I headed into T2. My T2 was slow because I had problems putting my socks on my feet and then I had to tie my laces instead of speed laces. I was running! Woohoo! I think I paced myself fairly well on the run. It felt like my speed was maintained the entire time and this was good since I really hadn't ran in 6 weeks. The run hurt, but I kept it up and I didn't walk the entire time. No heart rate monitor either the entire race so I had no clue how hard I was pushing. The run course was very boring; just a simple out and back. My foot started to hurt. Well, I think it was but I can't remember now. I'm pretty sure it was and I should've stopped and walked, but I got caught up in the moment and just kept running. My form was crap though. I dropped at least one place on the run though when Noah finally caught up with me and passed me. I came into the finish line area and heard Adam announcing. I picked up the pace a bit and ran through the crowd. I heard people yelling my name, but I had tunnel vision and really didn't see anyone. I crossed the line and I was done. I felt pretty good, too.

I did pretty well. I finished 6th in my age group of 32 and 46th overall of 452. That put me in the top 20% of my age group and top 10% overall for this small sprint tri. If I didn't ride 107 miles 2 days before and then aquajogged 2 and a half hours the day before, I might have done a little bit better. I'm really happy though with the run. I averaged 7:43/mile for a total time of 23:09. My swim was great with 30th place overal and a time of 8:06. T1 was fairly quick at 1:00 flat and T2 was slower at 0:54. I was disappointed with my bike at 41:03 which is 21.6mph. Final time was 1:14:14.

Good race overall. I'm happy with it. One problem though is that my foot is hurting again. Not a very good sign. I'm pretty sure that the next time that I run will be IMFL. I called my PT today and she'll call me back tomorrow. I think the bone bruise is probably back. I did some exercises today and I think it might just be soft tissue stuff. The new orthodics are great, but I'm in the old one to help ease the pressure off the 3rd met. We'll see what Rebecca says and I'll keep up the work. I'm very disappointed that this happened, but I gotta keep pushing forward.

Shoe mileage: 40 miles