I’m back!…with another race(s) report. Since I haven’t posted in a long time I’ll do a quick recap of my situation:
My wife and I are moving to Utah for at least a year come the middle of summer, but first we are going on a long backpacking trip in Europe. If I’m diligent, there will be some awesome vacation reporting to come. In racing news, there hasn’t been too much…mostly running. I did hit another PR in the KY Derby Festival MiniMarathon by posting a 1:23:49. The weather was PERFECT, so I’m not sure I can do much better than that again, but it’s nice to have a time that fast with my name next to it.
Anyways, to the present. Since we will be leaving the Cincinnati area I decided now was the perfect time to cross the American Triple-T off my racing bucket list. If you’re familiar with it, it’s a small (about 400 racers) event held in Portsmouth, OH at a state forest and it consists of 4 triathlons over 3 days (1 SuperSprint Friday evening, 2 Olympic distance races Saturday with the afternoon race having a B-S-R order, and a Half-Ironman on Sunday). This brutal weekend of exertion is one of the remaining events in the country that is still considered to be close to the roots of triathlons beginnings in terms of its atmosphere. The weekend is essentially a festival honoring triathlon and the community aspect is a big draw. It’s high time I made my way to Portsmouth to see what it is all about.
Heading into the weekend, the forecast looks beautiful but hot with 0% chance of rain and highs in the 80’s. As I arrive to the course on Friday evening, the scenery is spectacular and the roads are hilly. Friday’s race is a super sprint (250m swim, 6km bike, 1mi run), so I ditch most of my non-essential racing equipment and op to go with the minimal setup. This means no GPS, no nutrition, no wetsuit, and no socks. Considering my current bike and swim fitness (see: not prime) I am not too pleased to be “seeded” in the top 100. This means that I start near the front in the time-trial swim start. This allows plenty of people to swim over and around me in a mere 250m. I can only imagine how many will pass me in the longer swims. Either way, only being 250m, the swim is over very quickly and I’m into (and out of) transition.
The bike is a quick out to the main park road, then a 180 turnaround, then a climb up a hill to the campgrounds before spinning again and descending back to transition. my general pattern here is I pass a fair number of people on flats and sustained climbs, then get passed on the descents. I’ve been riding my road bike mainly (when riding at all) this season, so my comfort with my TT setup isn’t as great as it should be. For this reason, and since I don’t have any goals for Triple-T other than to experience it and live, I am descending conservatively. Anyways, it’s back to T2 and on to the run before I know it. However, for a 3.6mile bike, it was surprisingly taxing.
Since I have been running consistently, I intend to make up some lost time here. Once I get away from the congestion near transition I take off. The 1 mile run is an out and back that takes us to the head of the trail we will be running for the longer runs the rest of the weekend. We happen to hit the turnaround just at the base of an ominous climb…a little teaser for what’s ahead. The second half of the run is slightly downhill and so I pick up the pace even more. I manage to pass quite a few people in such a short distance and cross the line still feeling strong.
But this is only the beginning of the story. Two more days and a lot more distance to cover…
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