Week Three

Week three in my end-of-year short course bonanza has come and gone, not with a whimper but not quite with a roar. After a pair of 3rd places at Westport & Fairfield, i was feeling sharp and fit going into my 3rd race in as many weeks at the ITPMan Triathlon in Darien.

Saturday races are great, as they allow me the rest of the weekend to eat & drink a bit more copiuosly and to spend more time hanging with the family in a less-stressed state. After an early rise on a 45-degree morning, i was off to Darien for the 7am start. I had a decent week of "peak" training, short but sweet intervals and three swims, so i was confident i could go hard from the gun and finish strong on the slightly longer sprint course (1/2-mile swim, 15-mile bike and 5-mile run.)

I finally got in the first wave, which was a relief, and once again had a combative swim. I've become much more comfortable swimming in a pack this summer and actually looked for groups to latch onto. I came out in 14:38 which was sub-par on my percentile meter (77th percentile iin the race) but a strong swim nonetheless. No bad spots around the buoys, no off-course detours, just consistent hard swimming where i felt good & strong the whole way.

I bolted out of t1 and fumbled getting one foot in a shoe, while two fast-looking guys passed me. For some reason i started laughing out loud, not a very friendly thing to do but all i could think was that these guys were fast-looking dudes and that i would very soon be leaving them far in my wake. My thoughts were confirmed as I got my foot in, spun out for 10 seconds and easily closed the gap to them. As i approached, I got into my aerobars and then just pulled around & accelerated. By the first turn onto the post road at the 1-mile point, they were 500 yards behind me and I was gone. I continued to pick up the effort and overtook a dozen or so more people, including female Pro & triathlon pin-up girl Jessi Stensland. I gave her a friendly wave & a "good job" on my way by. At about the 5-mile point I came to a turn to start the lolly-pop top of the course. A few volunteers were manning the corner and one of them yelled to me that i was in 2nd place, which was great considering we were only a third of the way through the bike course.

I continued to push hard and by the time I got back to that spot (ending the lollypop) the volunteer told me I was closing in on the leader. Great news again! I upped the effort on the net-downhill return to transition, going 26-27mph in most spots. As i got closer toward the end, i got caught up 3 separate times on cars going in my direction but held up by bikers in the oncoming lane. In two cases i had to coast behind them, whistling to let me by, and in one case i had to nearly dismount to sneak around the car at a corner. There was no fault of the volunteers really, i expect it had more to do with the fact that the leader and I were pretty far ahead of everyone else at that point. By the end of the ride, the leader (tri-coach and Kona qualifier Cliff Scherb from NYC) had actually put 30 seconds into me and was running out the access road to start his 5-mile run. At that point he had a 3-minute lead on me, but nobody in transition was able to give me a split!

I ran out hard on two numb feet (remember it was 45 degrees at the start), hoping that i wasnt breaking my toes with each footstrike. At the 1-mile point a woman was nice enough to give me a split - "you're 6 minutes down on the lead!!" Thanks a lot! I knew she was wrong but when your heart rate is 175+ its hard to think clearly. I couldnt see him up the road with all the turns, and heck he out-rode me, maybe he's a runner stud who just ran a 5-minute mile, and maybe I'm dogging this run? Anyway I went to the redline and kept it there for the duration of the 5 miles. I ended up pulling back 30 seconds to run just under 33 minutes (5th best on the day). 33 minutes is a bit of a dissapointment for me - i've run sub-30 in running races when i was not in nearly this kind of condition - and part of me thinks that I didnt push myself hard enough while running solo with nobody in sight to try & catch up to.

In reality (got to love wave starts) I caught and passed a fast 40-yo Mark Desautelle, who was in the wave behind me and virtually ahead of me by a minute coming out of t2. I out-ran him and finished the race 20 seconds ahead of him for 2nd place overall, so i was pushing at least hard enough to beat someone that i didnt know was ahead of me!

All in all, after 3 consecutive weekends racing i have two 3rds and a 2nd place overall for my resume' - and more motivation to conjure my inner fish over the winter. If i can cut my 1/2-mile swims from 14-and- change to 12-and-change, i will be a little bit further up on the pointy end where i can ride & run with people who will push me, and hopefully I can get some wins along the way.