Summer in Seattle brings nice weather and of course Seafair. Today I did the Seafair Olympic triathlon and as Coach Cody said the week before – be ready to step into the hurtlocker. This race wasn’t a full Olympic with only 20 miles bike and slightly longer swim but still a good race and really fun bike course on the I-90 bridge where we hit winds.

Really early start with transition opening at 5.30 and a lot of people in the Olympic and Sprint race so after driving around Seward Park finding parking I managed to get my station setup and ready with a good 30 minutes to go before first wave starts.

Swim was two laps so a bit of slalom between slower swimmers. I started fairly slow and kept out of the fight in the middle as I didn’t want to get the heart rate rush I got when doing the Victoria Half. Swim felt really nice and I managed to push on pretty good with 27:12 finish time on this 1 mile swim. This ended up being slightly faster than I had planned which is kind of nice since I started slow and controlled.

Transition to bike was a straightforward and I was off for 20 miles pushing 100-110%  functional threshold level on my power meter. The ride was nice with a couple of odd transition loops to and from the I-90 bridge where you couldn’t ride fast at all. I kept my power around 100 and made special effort not to push too hard up the hills and I know now that I need to practice riding hard with high power output on slight downhills. I ended up with a PR in races where the average speed was just under 21 mph. The one thing I really was surprised about was that normally I am passed on the bike and run but today only a handful bikers caught me.

I surprised myself and actually ate and drank the right amount on the bike which I didn’t manage to do in Victoria. Felt fresh and strong going out on the run and after a few hundred yards I settled into a 8.30-8.45 tempo which is where I wanted to be. At about 2 miles there is a fairly long hill which was tough and slow. When I ran past the finish line to go out on my second lap I felt really good and the watch showed I had done 1 lap in just under 27 minutes. I decided to push a bit on the second lap and I managed to run my fastest 10K at 52:17

All up a good day with 9th out of 35 in my age group and 73 out of 305 overall with a final time of 2:19

Really happy with the day as I beat my 10k PR, hit my fastest avg race speed both on the bike and the swim.