Ouch...

Or...

Heart of the Valley Triathlon Race Report!

First, the summary, then the details.

Summary:
Slow and painful.

Details:
There are going to be some complaints...sorry. Just remember, I'd rather be racing in a horrible race than doing just about anything else, and even at a race like this, where I didn't come close to my goal time, I'm always happy I did it. If nothing else, it was a good workout, right?

Well, to start, AA Sports needs to work out some way to not make the people in the late swim waves wait for hours before the race. You could only pick up your packet the day of the race and they closed the packet pickup at 7:45am because they wanted everyone at the race before the first heat started at 8:00am. In theory, that's great. Equality in action. Make everyone show up at the same time. In reality, it doesn't work. I arrived at Osborne Aquatic Center at 7:15am to check in and my heat started at 10:15am. That's too long to sit around a pool deck. If anything, it's unfair to the people in the later heats. By the time I started, people from the first couple heats were down at the Diary Queen having a Peanut Buster Parfait.

Anyhoo, in the water at 10:15am and pretty good for about six laps...then we started bunching. You'd think that a 50 meter pool would afford plenty of space for passing. You'd be wrong. For whatever reason, the six of us in ol' lane number four had a lot of trouble getting around each other. I came out of the water in 12:04 for 750 meters - 15th overall and almost what I was hoping for, but I was gassed from trying to fight through everyone.

And that's the end of the highlights.

T1 was pretty good, but the first steep hill comes up so fast, two blocks into the bike course, that I hadn't caught my breath from the swim. The rest of the bike course went like this: hill, hill, hill, hill, hill, dead squirrel, hill, and I came into T2 about three minutes slower than my latest practice ride on the same course.

T2 fine and I was out on the run course. No complaints here - it's actually a very flat and fast run course, but I was just toast after the hilly bike ride. Fork me, I was done. A very, very slow 5k later and I came around the Linus Pauling Middle School track for the last 400 meters...which is always a good way to end a race.

Post race was great: hot showers in the OAC, good food, and absolutely amazing weather for the second straight tri, so not all was bad.

Time to get back to training. See you out on the trails.