I did my first triathlon race in May at Issaquah Triathlon and today I was back doing a tri on the virtually the same course. Excited to see how much I would be able to improve my result and I’m really proud of todays result.  The Issaquah Sprint took me 1:28 to finish and I place 218 overall and 37th in my age group. Today I surprised myself with a 66th place overall out of 455 and 4th out of 32 in my age group but most importantly I shaved off 10 minutes.

Today was a lot of fun which started with a fast swim where I really tried to go all out and I kept a really good tempo at the front of my wave for the first 300 m or so but couldn’t keep it up all the way but a 6:32 swim gave me a really good start. Crowed at the end of the swim cheered a lot and I felt I was among the first out of the water, turns out my time was 28th overall and just 4-5 ahead of me in my Male 35-44 year old wave.

My lungs burned a good 10 minutes or so into the bike so I did start a little too hard but my plan was to test going all out on the swim and push hard on the bike and then endure the run as much as I can without using my watch to check my pace.

The bike ride was fun trying to stay ahead of the pack of wolf on their Tri bikes and for a while I felt like I wasn’t moving at all when all the top athletes passed me so quick I just felt the air as they swooshed by. Some of these guys started a bit too hard and I caught up with a handful but I ended up riding alone  for the second half, in a vacuum behind the top and ahead of the racers that are human like me on the bike .. ie sub 20mph in average. At one point I even thought I had missed a turn somewhere .. where is everyone?

Second transition was pretty straight forward and on the run which is where I need to really work a lot on enhancing my lung capacity and endurance to be able to speed up a bit. It was passing time again and it wasn’t me passing anyone…  I didn’t use my watch at all on the run as I wanted to see if would actually run faster if I didn’t have the watch showing the pace and it turned out I wasn’t any faster and it was annoying to not know how far I had left. I was really tired the last mile on the run and was so glad when I saw the finish and even happier when I noticed that I was going to come in at under 1.20. I didn’t really know how I had raced compared to others so when I checked the posted results I couldn’t find my name among the 200 that were posted … but I was checking the third and forth paper where I usually find my name not realizing that my name was listed as nr 66 on the first page not even 15 minutes after the winner.

YES , YES, YES – the early morning training sessions and all the hard work I have put in has really paid off. My goal for the races this season has been to be on the top 50% but today I really surprised myself and placed 4th out of 32 in my age groups.

Talking with my Pro Club Tri Team friends after the race it turns out we are 3-4 that might push each other into doing the Black diamond half ironman in 4 weeks – get it over with and really train for one of those races next season with a little experience from doing one..

Next race: Lake Stevens Olympic Triathlon 10 Sept and then Black Diamond Olympic or Long Course (70.3)

Brjann

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