I complete last week's Murakami Olympic Distance triathlon in 2:25.
The time is over 3 minutes off the 2:21 I recorded in 2011, which I suppose is as good as I could expect given my leisurely training.
If my result is a bit disappointing for me, the race experience itself was particularly desultory.
I am seeded in the first wave, the fastest of the five waves. It is cool and flattering to be in the faster group, but it mostly serves to demonstrate how relatively weak my swim continues to be. As we swam I actually felt like my swim form is strong - but I watched the other orange caps (my wave) pull farther and farther away from me. At the halfway turnaround it is disheartening to see how far ahead the mass of orange caps are.
After a 31 minute swim and 3-minute transition the disheartening feeling is only amplified as I find myself cycling into headwind with no one near me - at the turnaround I see my teammates powering farther and farther ahead of me in tight draft packs. I tell myself to stay competitive and stay in the moment - focus on powering through each pedal stroke and keep overtaking the slower cyclists in front of me. Toward the end of the 40k when a fast cyclist from one of the slower seeded waves does overtake me, I surge to stay with him, blatantly drafting off of him for at least 3 kilometers until a combination of fatigue and shame causes me to lose contact (I usually never draft). I feel like my bike effort was reasonably good, but the time of 72 minutes really sucks relative to previous times and the times of guys I kept up with in the past.
The run is a similar story - it really takes a lot of effort for me to clock the 40-minute 10k, I certainly did not give up like some people imply afterwards. I feel like I poured 100% into the run when I stagger across the finish line. But yeah I have to assume if I was battling neck-and-neck for a podium spot I would have tapped into another level of speed (I was hardly battling for a podium spot--- my age-group friends Mark Shrosbee and Brett Whiteoak are astonishingly fast and their times were some 15-minutes or so faster than mine).
The time is over 3 minutes off the 2:21 I recorded in 2011, which I suppose is as good as I could expect given my leisurely training.
If my result is a bit disappointing for me, the race experience itself was particularly desultory.
I am seeded in the first wave, the fastest of the five waves. It is cool and flattering to be in the faster group, but it mostly serves to demonstrate how relatively weak my swim continues to be. As we swam I actually felt like my swim form is strong - but I watched the other orange caps (my wave) pull farther and farther away from me. At the halfway turnaround it is disheartening to see how far ahead the mass of orange caps are.
After a 31 minute swim and 3-minute transition the disheartening feeling is only amplified as I find myself cycling into headwind with no one near me - at the turnaround I see my teammates powering farther and farther ahead of me in tight draft packs. I tell myself to stay competitive and stay in the moment - focus on powering through each pedal stroke and keep overtaking the slower cyclists in front of me. Toward the end of the 40k when a fast cyclist from one of the slower seeded waves does overtake me, I surge to stay with him, blatantly drafting off of him for at least 3 kilometers until a combination of fatigue and shame causes me to lose contact (I usually never draft). I feel like my bike effort was reasonably good, but the time of 72 minutes really sucks relative to previous times and the times of guys I kept up with in the past.
The run is a similar story - it really takes a lot of effort for me to clock the 40-minute 10k, I certainly did not give up like some people imply afterwards. I feel like I poured 100% into the run when I stagger across the finish line. But yeah I have to assume if I was battling neck-and-neck for a podium spot I would have tapped into another level of speed (I was hardly battling for a podium spot--- my age-group friends Mark Shrosbee and Brett Whiteoak are astonishingly fast and their times were some 15-minutes or so faster than mine).
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