Peachtree City Sprint

Peachtree City Sprint

Date of Race: 08/21/2010

Distance: .3 mile swim, 14 mile bike and 3.1 mile run

Total Race Time = 1h 28m 57s

Overall Place = 440/1000 approx?

Age Group = Male 40-44

Age Group Place = 69/107

Pre-race:  Pre-race starts the day before for me. It's gives me less to worry about and I feel better prepared. I washed my bike and went over it to make sure everything was functioning properly. Cleaned & lubed the chain. All I had to do was check my tires in the morning. Loaded the bike onto my car the night before (car in garage). Packed all my stuff in my transition bag and filled my bottles the night before and placed in fridge. Drank fluids throughout the day and had pasta w/marinara for dinner. I knew I wasn't going to get much sleep, but I went to bed around 10pm and set my alarm for 4:00am. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to get down to PTC and not feel rushed. Went to sleep going over my transition area in my mind and visualizing the race. Alarm went off and I felt rested, apparently I didn't have problems sleeping. Had a bowl of cereal with banana and a cup of coffee.  Grabbed my bag & bottles and headed out at 5:00am. Took about an hour to drive to the race site. Checked and filled my tires in the parking lot and headed over to registration to pick up my packet & get body marked. Always good to see familiar faces from the Atlanta Triathlon Club. I had a bagel w/pb around 6:30am. Glad I did because I didn't hit the water until 8am.

Warm-up: I got in the water and swam about 1/3 of the way to the first bouy. For me it's not so much about warming up as getting comfortable in the open water. My goal is to convince my mind I can do this and to remain calm. Looks like it worked. I stood around for what seemed like forever before I started the swim. I wasn't really nervous, but felt anxious to start. I grouped up with Chanel, Tony & David Stewart while we waited. Tony & I discussed that we would go out in pairs. Which helped me out later and motivated me to push through.

Swim: My swim started at 8am. I jumped in and tried to make sure the adrenaline didn't make me push too hard too fast. My biggest concern is going to hard, getting tired and loosing form. I was also concerned about my navigation as I had issues the week before on the OWS training session. I was able to stay relaxed and concentrated on my form. I'm primarily a bilateral breather when I'm relaxed, but when I start going hard I start breathing every 2 strokes. I started counting my strokes and trying to pace myself. 2 strokes, 2 strokes, 3 stokes, 2 stokes, 2 strokes; making sure I would switch sides, then later trying to get more 3 strokes in between each breath. I think that worked because I remained relaxed and never got tired. I had a bit of a problem with water getting into my right goggle and even tried re-positioning it and clearing it. When that failed, I just accepted it and continued with the swim. It felt good to pass other swimmers and at times I could feel others on my feet, but I still remained relaxed and just made sure my form was good. I made a point to sight regularly and as I found that I wasn't too far off, I sighted less and focused on my form. I got to the first buoy and it got a little crowded but made the turn with no problem. At this point I couldn't see the next buoy or where exactly to go. I just followed the pack and started sighting again until I saw the exit point. The last 100 meters I picked up the pace a little. I remembered some advice Tony gave me before the start. He said to start kicking hard towards the end to get my legs ready for the bike. I got out and felt great. Instead of feeling relieved that the swim was over, I felt I could've swam a bit longer distance. Compared to my previous tri (My First Tri), I felt like a real swimmer and not like someone struggling to swim.

Swim Time: 14m:15s

T1: Got to my area, wiped the grass from my feet, put socks & shoes on. I made sure to put on my helmet and buckle it before running out. I don't think my T1 time was great and I think I could improve on it. I should try going w/o socks to shave some time.

T1 Time: 2m:19s

Bike: Got on the bike, felt great and heard someone yelling "Go ATC!" and that got me pumped. I got out of the saddle and started to push when I heard a volunteer yell, "No passing!". I hit the brakes. Opps! I didn't get penalized but I was feeling good and motivated. I realized at this point that although I had set my HR monitor before the swim and it was working, I wasn't getting any HR info. I thought maybe because of the swim it had thrown it off or it's not waterproof and it just died. Either way, nothing I could do now. Ride was pretty uneventful. Going through one of the neighborhoods before heading back, there was a family with kids cheering. The kids had their arms extend and I swung by, extended my arm and high five them, which made me feel good and gave me a mental boost. Around mile 11 I had a GU. I knew I needed something for the run. I also slowed my pace on the last 2 miles. I wanted to bring my heart rate down, as I'm sure it was high, but had no way of knowing. Based on the results, I dropped the hammer. Most of my rides, I'm averaging in the 17mph range. I've never reached 18 and I almost hit 20mph.

Bike Time: 42m:26s    AVG 19.8mph

T2: I unbuckled my shoes as I was coming in, as an effort to get them off quickly. Ran into the transition, racked the bike and switched out to my running shoes. I must have forgotten to put out my hat because it wasn't on the ground. I reached into my transition bag and luckily I didn't have to dig for it. I'm sure I can get my transition times to be quicker. Looks like I'm going to have to work on this.

T2 Time: 1m:46s

Run: I didn't feel quite as strong heading out as I did on the bike. I began to wonder if I pushed too much on the bike. I wasn't in pain, I just felt like my legs weren't turning over as quickly as I'd like. Since my HR wasn't working, I wasn't getting any info from my footpod to give me any feedback on my pace. At this point my goal was to run the entire way and not stop to walk. I kept a good steady pace and about a little over a mile, Tony passes me. I was quite surprised as I thought he was ahead of me and it made me feel good about my first 2 legs of this race. Now I was going to try and keep Tony within sight. Having experience on the track with Tony, I know he's faster than I am, but if I could just hang onto him for a bit, I could pull myself through this last part. I think I was able to do this for maybe a mile and after some turns, I never saw him until the end. I heard a volunteer say there was only a half mile left and I pushed a little more. As I heard the announcer and the cheering of the crowd I pushed even harder. Looks like my pace was 9:05, which is faster than I felt, but I was hoping for sub 9:00 pace. Had I held back a little more on the bike I may have had more for the run.

Run Time: 28m:07s

Post Race: Had some pizza and hung around the ATC tent. Got to catch up and talk to other ATCers about their race. It was great to see ATC support out there. Of course a few minutes after the race is over, I look at my watch and now I start getting HR info. So, at least it's not dead. I'll have to test it to make sure I can get HR info after a swim.

What would you do differently: I've got to work on my transitions. Without HR info, it's hard to know where to make adjustments. Overall I'm very happy with my results. I had a faster time than my previous race that was slightly shorter (.3 mile, 14mile, 3.1 mile vs .25mile, 12mile, 3mile). There's definite improvement and that always encouraging and motivating in training. When I joined ATC back in April, this was the race I was aiming for. My goal at that time was just to finish (I could barely swim). A couple days ago I re-evaluated my goal and chose a finish time of under 1:30:00. I achieved it with 1:03 to spare.  I'm ready to resume training for my next race. I've got 2 more sprints I want to do by the end of the year and moving to Olympic next year.

I give this a 5/5. I had heard about this being a great event and course. They had plenty of volunteers. I would recommend this race to anyone and I'll be back again next year. I also made a point to thank the volunteers on the run and especially those cleaning up and breaking down the transition area.

Big thanks to all the coaches & ATCers. The training & support provided by this group is awesome and I can only image how much better I'm going to be as I continue being part of a fantastic group.