Last Race of the Season

I'm not sure what the hell I'm going to do with myself now that the season is over, but I now have a couple weeks of not training before I start the base phase for my Ironman preparation. I wanted to get one last race in to set the tone. Longhorn two weeks ago was so tough and I felt so bad that I wanted to get in a good race to set the tone.

This was definitely that race. I swam a 21:00, although I didn't feel like I was setting the surface afire. The guy who won the whole thing swam an 18:00 and it was quickly apparent I wasn't going to hold on to his feet, so I swam my own and was third out of the water.

The bike course was actually closer to 27 miles rather than the 24.8 for a true Olympic. I knew the bike course had a tough climb at mile 7, then another at mile 10, followed by a fast roller section. I hit those hard enough not to lose too much time, but I didn't press on the rollers. I knew the last 11 miles to be predominantly uphill, and theorized that I could gain a lot of time if I really drilled that section. I figured a lot of people would pour it on for the hills then not have much left. I hit 50 on the downhill and then hammered the last 11 and I think I picked up some good time. I came off the bike in second place.

I also had to control my pace on the run because I have a tendency to go out too hard, then really pay the price in the last couple miles. I was also trying to take very small strides and up the turnover as my coaches have been trying to get me to do for months. I went out at 6:30 for the first mile, so knew I had to back off a little. The second mile has the big hill on it, so I slowed to 8:00 for mile two, then hit 7:00 for mile three through Start / Finish and on to lap two. That was the pace I was trying to maintain. My quads were starting to cramp a little from the hills and the short strides, but I felt a lot fresher than I did. Mile four was a 7:40 so I tried to up the tempo a little and did 7:45 for the hilly mile again, then took it home with another 7:00 to finish strong.

Good enough to win my age group by a decent margin and get fifth overall. Felt like it was a good final effort although the run could have been faster. I'm happy I was able to control the pace, although I'd like to minimize the big swings. I start training full time with Jamie Cleveland next month, so I'm hoping he can make a runner out of me en route to a solid Ironman. Until next month though, lots of unstructured training.

Age group and overall results: http://www.seidelproductions.com/Events/TXTri/10_20_2007_individual.htm