Friday, July 14, 2006

Diamond in the Rough Triathlon - Perryville MD


This was my 4th triathlon in 6 weeks. Needless to say, I'm ready for a break, but I wanted to do this race since it is our annual triclub race and I thought I'd be ok. We headed up at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday to get there by 6:30 a.m. Igda and Emi actually got up this time to come cheer me on. It was great to have them there.


I was a little bummed after finding out that the swim was cancelled due to high bacteria counts in the Susquehanna river. Too much rain with runoff up stream had the water looking pretty murky. Oh well. The race turned into a duathlon with a 5k run substituted for the swim. I was a little dissappointed since I really haven't been doing much running between my other races.

I tried to run the first 5k by keeping my breathing as much under control as possible. I got into a pretty good rythm and finished in fairly good shape. Grabbed my bike and headed out. I bought a new rear race wheel (thanks, Igda) but I made the mistake of waiting too long to glue the tire up and had to leave it at home. Bummer!

I had pretty good bike. I managed to finish with the 17th best split out of 277 men on a pretty challenging course. I headed out for the final 5 mile run and my legs were starting to tighten up. This was going to hurt. I ran the first 2 miles all alone without being passed, but after about 3 miles the herd behind me began catching up. There wasn't much I could do to muster anymore speed. I decided to just keep chugging along. I ended up finishing 47th overall and 13th in my Age Group. I was pretty dissapointed I didn't finish in the top 10 of my age group which was well within reach coming off the bike in the position that I was in. Guess I need to improve my running. It was fun to have Emi run down the finish chute. I was gassed!