The first half of my Oliver race report is here…

Race Day morning started really early. 4:30am or 5am or something ridiculous like that. I’m not a fan of the early wakeup. Since it was so early, we decided that it was a dumb idea for Torbin to come with me to the start. It’s tough being a spectator – because you can’t go anywhere I go – and I basically just hang out with my triathlon friend and/or focus on the race. So his plan was to sleep in and then come see me later in the afternoon. Good plan, worked out well, especially since I know that his support is there every day!

Ok, so now we’re at the swim start. I’m a different swimmer now. Much faster, so I wanted to get a spot near the front. I was in the first row… but way out on the side. The strategy worked well. As you can see from the picture, it still was a bit crazy but I was way more comfortable. I like the new one loop course. My time was 34:03 (last year 34:54) – Hmmm, maybe I was a little too comfortable and probably should have gone faster. Oh well, no biggee, it was comfortable.

After the swim, we had a 500m-650m run to transition. It wasn’t too bad… kind of a nice opportunity to get your head back from the swim and get ready for transition. There was one bike gone from my rack, and this helped me to think, “OK, race starts now, let’s get going … catch her on the bike.” I was really ready for this part of the race. Confident, practiced, and really looking forward to putting it out there. My goal was to repeat the 2:55 that I knew I could do from my TT during training camp.

I biked hard, focused on pedaling technique, kept the heart rate up, and felt great during the whole ride. I was disciplined on my nutrition – except for one section second loop of the bike where a pack of drafters moved me into a distracted and annoyed head space. I think that’s something I have to learn… that racing comes with distractions … because I think I paid for this lapse in nutrition on the second half of the run. Previously, I’ve just kind of cruised on the bike. Racing was a real nice change. I’m really proud of how well I did on the bike, but it does come with extra set of distractions that I’m sure some more experience will help me deal with. Oh yeah, and another thing, pretty much every girl that I was riding around had an aero helmet. What’s with that? Shoot, I guess I’m going to have to get a dorky hat.

Official results, 2:50:24, 32.7km/hr average = Awesome! I’m really excited by this new personal world record for race day average speeds. Silly, I know. But I can’t stop smiling. FYI – that’s over 14 min faster then the last time I raced Oliver.

to be continued…