Last Sunday's Murakami Triathlon was my big "A" race of 2011 -- it was not supposed to be, but it worked out that way. The race was an Olympic Distance PB for me, and arguably my fastest overall triathlon performance to date. The bike leg was great, my swim was poor, and my run was acceptable.
SWIM - 31:09 (185th of 542)
It was a pleasant morning for a swim in the ocean. But despite all my training, I did not seem to execute well. I got off to a slow start (partly by plan), and then just seemed to never get comfortable. Through the first half I had hopes that I was going faster than it felt, but when we ran up onto beach at the halfway mark I despaired to look at my watch and see spit of over 16 minutes. (I had hopes of a swim time closer to 25 minutes). But open-water swim conditions are variable - my veteran swim teammates Chad and Keren estimated their swim times were 3 minutes slower than usual, so my effort was not as bad as I feared at that point. And thanks to all the training I was not nearly as drained from the swim as I used to be several years ago.
BIKE - 1:10:50 including transitions (51st place of 542)
The bike distance of 40k is short enough that (unlike Vineman Half Marathon) the lack of long training did not seem to matter. The short sessions on the indoor trainer did seem to help. And I have to admit again that my new bike really helped. I simply outroll people on the black beauty. I was amazed to pass so many people on the fast, flat out-and-back course. It felt exhilarating cycling back with a tailwind at speeds over 40-kilometers per hour.
RUN - 39:18 (23rd of 542)
I did OK. My unusually fast run at this course in 2008 (36:48) created unrealistic expectations. Sunday's 39:18 run time is in line with my other recent triathlon run times -- and my training. In running my race result times and training effort are much more closely correlated. I guess that is a nice aspect of running - the justice, the simple payoff for the preparation involved.
TOTAL -- 2:21:17 (49th place of 542)
Here are the overall results --
http://www.iwafune.ne.jp/~triathlon/2011/2011results-k.pdf
