TriRock NY Sprint – Harriman State Park, NY
800m swim, 15m bike, 5k run
Swim: 14:01
T1: 2:47
Bike: 50:57
T2: 1:18
Run: 25:58
1:35:01
8/26 A/G, 48/289 O/A
Signed up at the last minute simply to “do a race” and shake of the last of the grad school rust. Goals were to go hard, stay on the gas the entire race and see what happened. And thats what I did. I feel pretty darn good about the results, given minimal run speed work, no planned speed work on the bike, and limited swimming. I was confident that I could have a good race, as this past week I had some nice snap in my bike & run, with a breakthrough brick on Wed.
The race: Well run event. Competitor Group has taken over the SBR series and this was the inaugural year. Well organized setup, plenty of parking, nice venue, plenty of helpful volunteers. They lose points for not having the bathrooms open right away, but that may have been the state park employees. Live band, huge breakfast burritos, and free Red Hook beer after the race (but none for me).
Swim – I was in the third, and smallest wave (nice!). I opted for no wetsuit as the water was warm, and it was only an 800m swim. Course was out and back, but the challenge was all the lake grass. The first two waves chopped up the stuff so it was like swimming in Miso Soup. I had to slow up a couple of times to pull the crap out of my goggles, and untangle my hands and arms.
T1 was faffing about with my Garmin and socks. Next time I race a sprint, I leave both at home.
Bike – the course was a long out-&-back, then a short out-&-back. Up a hill, then down a hill. Lather, rinse, repeat. My race plan said “if you are not in pain, you aren’t moving fast enough” so I pushed and pushed. I flew by a ton of people, and only got passed by two or three. I’ve been trying to improve my descending as well, and that really helped on this course.
T2 faffing with the Garmin cost me here too… WTF is wrong with me?
Run – out on a “trail” that used to be a paved path, but was pretty degraded. Started climbing almost right out of the gate, and kept going mostly up until the turnaround. Splits reflect the course: 9:04
, 8:29, 7:52.
I got chicked around 2 miles by a 45-49 AG woman (she blistered the uphills), but held off all others in my A/G until less than 400m from the finish where I got passed by two guys flying past me. At that point I was calling down to Scotty for more power
, but the silly engineer was out on a break or something ’cause he never returned my call.
Lessons learned: Poor transitions cost me at least two A/G spots. That’s a lesson that stings a bit, but it’s easily fixable. My run needs improvement but it’s come a long way in just a couple of months of effort.
One more thing. It really feels great to write a race report again.