Bear Lake Triathlon Race Report

First, my apologies for making both of you wait for yet another eloquently crafted blog post about yet another triathlon! I know you struggled with the anticipation, for that I am sorry.

On to the race…

Bear Lake is a small local triathlon that the Cross Country Cycle Triathlon Team uses as a “team” race. Essentially, we all try to make this the race we do, so that we can socialize and share stories about our training and racing. Some of us take the race lightly, others very seriously, and a few just sandbag because that’s what they do best. One of the guys on the team is a photographer, as is his wife, and they made this video of the race. I won’t spoil it at all, but watch it. It’s awesome. HERE. They also own Absolute Photography, a team sponsor. Thanks guys! 

The swim:

I had high hopes for getting out into the overall lead on the swim and maintaining if for as long as possible throughout the rest of the race. Timmy had similar plans. After the first buoy (and swimming in knee deep water for the first hundred meters), I was drafting comfortably off of Tim, and we already had a gap into 3^rd place. Either Tim put the hammer down here, or I was dead from playing water polo all weekend, but he gapped me by 10 seconds or so. By the time he hit the beach, he had at least 15 seconds on me. But when I took a quick glance behind, it looked like we had cleared the next racer by a decent margin. At Bear Lake, part of your swim time is a quarter mile of running, uphill, to T1. I narrowed the gap on Tim to a few seconds, likely at the cost of a few more seconds on the run. But it was clear we were both taking it easy as to not burn our legs out.

T1:

SLOW. It’s clear that I need practice in this, but T times aren’t quite as key at the 70.3 distance. I’ll have to practice before IMWI, as I’ll need those precious minutes if I hope to qualify for world’s.

The bike:

The course is relatively flat with the exception of the Blockhouse hill. This was a pretty fast ride with the exception of having to climb up both sides, right at the turnaround. After the hill, everything seemed pretty easy. I could tell that all of my training has been focused on longer course races as the amount of power I could push on the pedals wasn’t very much. Not that I was going slow, but I didn’t have the sprint speed needed for a 12.4mi bike leg. I found myself stuck between gears, not enough power to turn the next gear up, but a very high cadence in the gear I was in. Not ideal, but again, with no speedwork, I was happy with where I was. Strava/Garmin file here.

T2:

SLOW. I’ll have to practice before IMWI, as I’ll need those precious minutes if I hope to qualify for world’s.

The run:

I took off out of T2, having lost another 15 seconds. Tim was just ahead of me. Much to my disappointment, I was just ahead of two guys who were going to drop 18-minute 5ks. At about mile 1, my right shoe came untied and I lost what time I had gained on Tim and the other race leaders. The rest was nice though, and having caught my breath, I took off again in pursuit. I passed the 60 year-old super-biker who crushed us, and made sure to give him props. I hope to be that fast when I’m his age. After I finally caught up to Tim, I was hopeful that he and I could close down the gap on the super-runners that had passed us. After what seemed like a long conversation, but realistically was just a few grunted words, Tim told me it was all me. I told him to put his head down and go, hoping he’d come with me. I tried to put the hammer down and close the gap. After a few hundred yards of going full speed, I looked up and saw that the gap had grown. Remembering that I dropped down for the sprint so that I wouldn’t need as long of a recovery time, I shut it down and let Tim come back up to me. We kept the pace up, and decided with a few hundred yards to go that we’d sort it out in a sprint finish. We were neck and neck when we hit the final straight, but the few seconds of recovery while I waited for him to catch up must have been my saving grace. If you haven’t watched the race video, you should. Strava/Garmin file here.

The results:

4^th overall, 1^st in the 25-29 age group. 1:07:31. Results are here.

 Overall, I was very happy with my race. Nutrition (not hard on a sprint distance race) consisted of a half-bottle of PowerBar IRONMAN perform on the bike, a PowerBar gel right before the swim, and a PowerBar performance energy bar (peanut butter) with coffee for breakfast. I should also note that the decision to drop down to the sprint was a very good one. I ended up hammering out another 35 miles on the bike when I got home. Solid day of training/racing!

Keep dreaming...