Joel's First Olympic

So the race morning wasn’t as early as normal as the race didn’t start until 10am for the OD as they started the half iron before it. I did my run warm up then got ready for the race.

I started the swim way in the back as I was thinking I was going to be slow; I think I only really swam once without major shoulder pain in the last 3 weeks. Needless to say I ended up having to pass one or two people. It was the most swimming I had ever done in the pack, I usually lead the pack and swim alone but definitely not in this race so I was swam over a few times and swam over a few people but I stayed calm and really focused on my hand entry so I didn’t blow out my shoulder! Out of my swim and encountered my “moment of Zen” for the race when I passed 4 or 5 people in the change tent and didn’t even have to worry about drafting.

Then I did a flying mount onto my bike passing another person getting on their bike standing on the mount line. I reset my lap at this point it was 28:50 so I am interested to see what my swim time was. The start of the bike was about ½ km of flat then a 1250 ft switchback climb over 1.5 miles. I kept my HR in check even though I wanted to stand and pass people but I didn’t. The ride on the plateau was really rolling with a pretty big headwind. Then I hit the 12 mile downhill with a 5% grade. It was so long my hips and legs were killing me from being aero at 60-70 km/hr for 15 minutes. So fun and I did not touch my brakes once which was my goal. I definitely had to hold back to keep my HR where I wanted it to be………….I had to keep reminding myself I had a 10km run to do. Then, into transition with a sweet dismount and out onto the run. I made sure to set the lap on my watch to see if I could negative split. The run was hard but I was able to push hard on the last 5 km and negative split by ~1min; 22min out and 21min back. This is likely my first negative split ever. In the end I definitely reached my process goal and even though my bike was slower than I would hope I think it had a lot to do with the course and the wind. I am so amazed that I actually paced myself fairly well!

No results are up yet but I was 9th overall and 2nd in age group with a time of ~2:29. Oh, and the best thing was that I had a summer week-end. It was 20 deg C at race time with a water temp of 19 deg C which made the day that much better. All in all it was a great race and I will be doing more OD tri’s. It makes the training all worth it.