Sorry for the delay in posting this. No excuse, Sir!
The good: we successfully proved that sprint tri's can hurt. A lot. Especially when your training focus is on iron distance tri's.
The bad: there are some crazy fast people out there...unfortunately, we're not among them!
The ugly: can the fast people sleep in once in a while? Please?
The excuse: we did not "taper" at all for this race...just squeezed it into our fairly hefty training schedule as an interval or "speed" workout. We use the word "speed" loosely! But this is probably not the best way to approach
a race and expect to do well.
The recap: This past Sunday was a beautiful morning in Central Pennsylvania. It was perfect for a day sleeping in, eating a leisurely breakfast, and doing some yard work. It also happened to be perfect for the Catfish Tri (well,
perfect minus the 0445 wake-up alarm...). Got to City Island, checked in, set up transition and walked the mile up to the swim start. A .9 mile swim sounds long for a sprint tri, but it's a fun point-to-point swim with the current. At about 80 degrees the water was warmer than the outside air temps. We opted not to wear the wetsuits figuring that the speed gain would be offset by the increased T1 time. Not sure if our logic was correct, but the fact that we're now pondering stuff like this causes Dawn to wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Dean was sent downstream with the second wave and had a very solid swim. Dawn survived the third wave and got to transition to re-discover the joy of having selected a rack near the guys...no other bikes nearby or
anyone else to compete with space for.
After a couple of speedy-for-us transitions, the fast, flat bike course beckoned. Dean rode the 2nd fastest bike split in his age group and finished it up with a solid run. The run course must have been a bit short, since Dean's split had him running 6:40 miles which is HIGHLY unlikely. Dawn crushed her own soul on the bike and had the fastest bike split in her age group, and the 5th fastest overall for the women! Her new bike (aka "the Honey Badger"...watch the hilarious video on you tube for more insight) apparently just does not give a $hit about the run. The Honey Badger just wants to go fast! Nevertheless, Dawn held on and posted a solid run split with 8 minute miles (again...we think the course is about 1/4 mile short).
Both of us improved our overall times from last year - most noticeably in the swim. And while we admit to some *benefit* to slightly deeper water and more current than last year, we both tried to push during the swim, so it was nice to see the results in the form of faster than expected times. End result was 3rd place finishes for each of us in our age groups (I know what you're wondering, and yes, there were more than 3 people racing in our age groups!). We may be number 3 but we keep trying! Next race is likely the Cannonman Half-Iron distance out near Bedford PA in August.
Anyone else racing this year? So far, the race reports are few and far between (hooray for Will Miller!).
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