JBlog

Link to my bike results.

Overall Results

Age Group Results

This race was a 1000 meter swim, 21 mile bike around the southern half of Rend Lake, and a 5k run along a very nice paved trail.

I stayed in Benton, Illinois at the Super 8 and was awoken at 4:00 AM by, presumably, a drunk person revving his very loud diesel engine outside of my room for a good 5 minutes. It seemed clear that his intent was to wake the sleeping patrons of the motel, and he succeeded in waking at least me. What would make anyone think such a thing is fun is a mystery to me.

Finally, he could be heard to be driving away from the motel and after tossing and turning I think I slept occasionally until I got my wakeup call at 5:45.

I met my dad and his wife Karen in the lobby of the motel and we walked next door to have some breakfast, but when we got to this Mexican restaurant, we found it to be locked with no lights on. After we stood there for a minute, two guys arrived at the restaurant and unlocked it, telling us it would be just a moment and they’d let us in. I didn’t really understand how they could get a restaurant ready to open in “a moment”, but true to their word, they let us in, served some some horrible coffee and passable eggs and oatmeal.

Then I was off to the transition area at Rend Lake. I arrived there shortly after 7:30, checked in, got my cool new black TShirt, set up my bike and accessories in the bike corral, and began to prepare myself mentally for the reality that I would soon be leaving the 46 degree air for 70 degree water and then back out of the water into hopefully slightly warmer air.

I “warmed up” (if such a thing is possible in water that temperature, I don’t know how to do it yet) by swimming a couple hundred yards, then got out of the water for a head count before heading back into the water. When the race began, I was near the front of the pack. I started strong but soon fell behind the fastest swimmer. There were a few elbows and knees thrown here and there, but it was a fairly peaceful swim. I’m still not at all accustomed to swimming in open water. I find it difficult to stay on the stroke for such a long period of time without turning.

I was the 12th person out of the water (about 5 seconds behind an 11 year old boy!) and ran the hundred or so yards to the corral, then proceeded to take 4:36 seconds to prepare to bike. It should have taken me slightly over 2:00, but because I had blistered in my previous tri I wanted to be sure to wear socks. The socks didn’t go on easily as my feet were still wet and the socks were pretty tight. I also threw on a very tight Under Armour shirt that was difficult to pull over wet skin and a cycling wind breaker over that. I had to snap my runner’s belt on, get my helmet and decided whether I wanted to wear my gloves, which I didn’t. So all that took way longer than I wanted it to.

I was finally on the bike, though, and after arguing with the velcro straps on my shoes for a minute or two was able to sneak my feet into my shoes and began to pedal in earnest. I downed about half of my energy gel as soon as I got on the bike and before too long I was passing people. I passed quite a few people on the ride, including one of my old high school buddies and his girlfriend, both of whom had absolutely destroyed me in the water. I caught Jon going over the bridge and then caught Steph about five miles after that. I passed a few more people and then slipped out of the cycling shoes before sailing in to the bike corral.

The run was the best I’ve had of any of the triathlons I’ve done. I somehow managed 8:18 per mile for an overall run time of just over 25 minutes. I was happy with that, but happiest with winning my age group (35-39) and placing 6th overall. A better T1 transition would have had me in 5th place overall, but I’m happy with a top 10 finish.

Swim was 12 fastest
Bike was 3rd fastest
Run was 19th fastest

I met dad and Karen at Cracker Barrel for lunch on the way back to Champaign and gorged myself.

It was a good race!

Tags: last chance, rend lake, Triathlon

That’s right – the Wednesday Night Fights are done until next year.

There were about 13 riders who left the Burwash lot, but only 12 bikes. Two of them, Luke and Jay, shared a Raleigh tandem bike and were ridiculously fast.

We headed for Seymour even though the wind was out of the east, which meant we had a tailwind while we were all still pretty fresh and strong. We clipped along at around 25 mph for most of the ride there. I was feeling pretty good until we shed a couple of riders about 2/3 of the way to Seymour, at which point the tandem bike got its first chance to pull the group. The speed jumped from 24-25 to 27 or more and I learned fairly quickly that I wanted no part in that kind of sustained speed, so I let the pack drop me and did some interval work with my aero bars.

I was still moving at 22-23 mph, which isn’t too shabby for a solo effort. I passed through Seymour and was about to turn down Rt 10 to head back to Champaign when I noticed the pack up ahead about a half mile had stopped to wait for me. I wasn’t expecting them to do that, so instead of turning down 10, I caught up to them and we were off again.

After crossing Highway 47, the pace picked up yet again and this time I tried to stay on a wheel for a little bit, but I only managed to hang on for a couple of minutes. I was shelled out the back and did an easy pedal all the way back down Bradley. Shay had been dropped shortly before me and eventually caught up. We rode side by side at 20-21 mph until he turned off to go down Rising and meet the group back at Burwash, where Dave had ordered up some pizzas. Since I’m not an official WC member and because I was pretty close to home having come in to the west side of Champaign, I just pedaled home.

There were still a couple of aphids out last night, but the lethal clouds we had ridden through the previous week seem to have been gathered up by the wind and pushed to Indiana.

Also broke the fender on my Trek yesterday afternoon. Of course, we’re going to get rained on for about half of the day today, so I’ll need to get the fender replaced today. I’ll need to visit Durst to get that chore done since CC doesn’t open until 10:00 and it will have started raining by then.

Oh … I’ve been asked to fill in on drums for Live Karaoke Band tonight. My buddy Jeff is unable to play for the next two weeks, so I’ll do the best I can to provide some beats for Tom and Guido. Very excited about this and hope I can pull it off without too many mistakes!

Tags: "group ride", aphids, live karaoke band, seymour, Wild Card