To begin, this is my first true podium in a professional triathlon race, so I am really happy with that. Coming into this weekend, training had not been going great because I was busy with school finishing my thesis proposal and finals, but I was excited to race the super sprint distance as I really love the high intensity heavy breathing feel of it. REV 3 was having the elite race be broken down into prelims on Saturday consisting of a 250 ish meter pool swim- 5 mile bike- 1.5 mile run and Sunday doing the course twice. Top 7 in each heat would advance to finals. The pool was a bit tricky to navigate with nothing on the bottom for depth perception, you needed to count strokes and/or sight to do turns but that was helped in the finals with putting cones near the walls. The bike course was simply around the NASCAR track, which was pretty sweet! flying around those banked turns in a group at 30 mph was great, and the run zig zagged two laps inside the track where you always had spectators cheering.
This picture gives a good idea of how the pool was different from a competitive swim race but I liked it. It was nice to still get waves and have some elements of open water in the swim.
Prelims on Saturday are always a bit nervous as the goal is just to advance as easily as possible to finals but you still have all the nerves because this race location and all was so unfamiliar. The first swim ended up going really well and I exited the water 5-7 seconds back of Eric Limkemann and Colin O'Brady- two former all american (I believe) swimmers in college. I chased hard for two laps but did not get any closer than 10 meters behind them. I looked back and saw a group of three were coming up, so I sat up and was absorbed and figured it would be better to relax before the run especially with knowing I could outrun many in the group. After a bit of confusion on the number of laps, we got into T2 and off on the run. I ran about 800 meters pretty hard and just cruised in the rest for 3rd in my heat and advanced to finals.
The pack from the first day. We worked pretty well and was nice to be feeling spry heading into finals.
That night, I slept 11- hours and woke up feeling pretty refreshed. I went for an easy 20 minute run in the morning since finals weren't until 1:30 pm and felt fantastic.
Finals were going to be much more competitive and had 15 pretty strong athletes on the line with a combination of fast runners, swimmers, and bikers. I lined up in lane 6, in between John Kenny and Colin O'Brady and we were off. I got out hard the first 50 and flipped even with Colin and John and had delusions of grandeur that I would stay swimming with them. In the end, they put 8- seconds on me in swim number one, but I just began drilling it on the bike and caught to lead pack of 7 two laps in with two really hard solo laps with my feet on top of my shoes. I went straight to the front as I wanted to keep the pace on knowing some fast runners were behind me. I got a few shout outs from the announcer for immediately going to the front and we had a few guys really willing to take hard pulls like John and Colin and Eric but we also had guys that would only attack on their pulls going off to the side and trying to take a flier. Not really a great strategy in ITU because 1. the pack does not appreciate it and 2. it hurts the pack. None of those stuck and we were caught by three others, making a pack of 11 heading into T2.
I got out of T2 in 5th or 6th and made my way into 3rd feeling very comfortable but running hard. Knowing the second swim is important in these races, I did not want to cook myself too early. Three of us had a solid 15- second gap (Justin Roeder, Jason West, had 10 seconds to myself) as we got to T3. When I went to put my goggles back on, they snapped and I did the second swim with no goggles. The second swim already hurts quite a lot but with eyes burning, it hurt a little more. I lost some valuable time due to that and exited the swim with my lane buddies, John and Colin. We bridged back up to Eric Limkemann and Justin and entered the final T5 together in a pack of 7 or so. We had lapped a few guys who were in our group, so it was a bit hard to understand who was a lap down or not. I made sure to get some water in on this ride and get ready to run. I got into T5 and instead of racking our bikes, volunteers were taking them from us! I ended up getting hit by a bike from an over eager volunteer so I think it would behoove them to keep a standard racking procedure in the future. T5 was further worsened by my racing flat insoles being bunched up, so I took both of them out and into the basket and ran without them. Got out of T5 in 7th with Jason West having been in a break on the bike. I moved into 4th relatively quickly and slowly reeled in 3rd with about 800 meters to go. I tried to really sprint with 400 to go as 3rd was a podium and double as much money as 4th.
My Mom still does not know how she made this video go into slow motion, but it ended up looking pretty cool as I was mid sprint for the line. I ended up having been in the fastest bike group for both rides and running the 3rd best combined run splits (7:08 first run and 7:01 second) for 1.5 miles (4:45 and 4:41 pace). Finishing 3rd was pretty sweet and was a great way to start off the summer season.
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