First Race in 08

I took this picture of Furly, our oldest cat, this morning....she lives a tough life. The picture pretty much represents how I felt yesterday after noon.

2008 has purposefully been a much more laid back year for me as far as training and racing goes. I've strung together a few decent training blocks, but I've mostly done whatever I felt like doing. I felt as underprepared as I ever have going into yesterday's race and had no expectations for anything other than having fun. The race is our local sprint race and was my first triathlon back in 2005. I've done it every year since.

The swim start was definitely full contact and clear water was hard to come by. I came out of the water in 6:52 and headed up the path toward transition. T1 time was 2:02 including the run up. I headed out on the bike course and tried to get my pace up pretty quickly. I passed several riders early on and got passed by only a couple of riders toward the end. I finished the bike leg in 35:41 with an average speed of 22.9mph. I exited T2 in 50 seconds and headed out on the run. I felt pretty good and finished the run in 23:26 with an average pace of 7:34.
I forgot to hit the stop button on my watch at the finish as I always do, so I didn't know my splits or finish time. My best finish at this race was last year with a time of 1:11:12. So, when the official results were posted, I was pretty surprised to see I'd better that time by almost two and a half minutes with a finish time of 1:08:50.

A couple of local roadies had ridden up to the race and a friend and I decided to bike the 45 miles back home with them. They're two of the strongest riders in our area and the pace was well beyond comfortable on the hilly trip back home. We finished with an average of almost 21mph and I was a bit tired afterwards to say the least. However, a Whopper meal from BK and a couple of beers later in the afternoon had me on the road to recovery. I feel great today, even though I stayed up to watch Michael Phelps take home number 8.

I'll be heading over to Dothan next weekend with a group of friends for the TriStates Century Ride. I did the ride a couple of years ago and am looking forward to going back...but I'm really looking forward to the post ride carbo-reload that will surely follow.

Happy Training,
TJ