The most difficult part of yesterday's Watarase Triathlon was waiting for the swim to start and absolutely baking on the concrete rim of the reservoir in our full wetsuits. The race officials finally allowed us into the water which proved disappointingly warm (disappointing when you are looking forward to a refreshing dip into cool water). For the entire 750 meter swim I felt miserably hot. I don't recall ever feeling too warm during a swim in my ten years of triathlons and open water swims (most of which have taken place in oceans or in cold lakes in Seattle area and northern California). I was so happy to stagger out of the hot, murky water in just under 14 minutes.
And then came the second most difficult part of the Watarase Triathlon -- the T1 transition. Dazed from the swim I struggled unsuccessfully to peel off the sweltering wetsuit as I hopped across an endless stretch of burning pavement in my bare feet. It took seemingly forever to get out of my wetsuit, slather on sunscreen and get on to my bike.
But the rest of the Watarase Triathlon - the 20k bike ride and 5k run - was no problem - a pleasant day in the park. It felt refreshingly cool on the bike - and the course was generally flat and straight. At a distance of only 5k the run was psychologically easy to deal with -- after having become accustomed to longer distances lately.
I seemed to place reasonably OK given that I usually am relatively more competitive the longer the distance of the event. I felt I was cycling well, staying in my aero bars, passing lots of other guys and that I generally improved since Nijima - though the results did not seem to support this perception.
Swim - 14:26 (64th overall)
Bike - 43;12 (145th overall) includes my endless transitions
Run - 19;16 (9th overall)
Overall - 1:16:54 (59th out of like 300 total entrants)
1 comment:
Nice work. Even though the swim sounds bad your time seems pretty good.
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