Pawling Triathlon Recap
Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 07:34PM I was lucky enough to receive a (very) late entry into this race; I hadn't originally planned it, but begged my way in as a post-injury tune up before the World Age Group championships next week. This race has grown quite a bit in the last few years and had 420 entrants today despite the threat of weather Armageddon (which fortunately did not happen).
After a tense wait pre-start to get an official number (and not upset local race management), I was assigned to the 3rd wave. At Pawling, the swim is in a lake, and after the few swims with TT stalwarts Mitch and Greg in the chilly LI Sound, the lake was like a bathtub. I put an overhauled stroke to the test and ended up with statistically the best swim of my tri career - 11th fastest in the water.
Unfortunately, what I REALLY needed help with was getting my darned wetsuit off my legs. The top came off easily, but despite having greased up, the legs were rough. An older gentleman that happened to be standing there - hopefully, his wave had not yet swum - started to try to help take it off...and I screamed at him to stop - felt bad about that...THEN, on the way out of T1, my chip came off and I had to put it back on my leg. Between those two episodes, I lost 3 places in the race and a podium spot. But more on that later. Moral: practice transitions a LOT!!
On the bike, and the new Cervelo P2C didn't disappoint. The final time didn't show it due to the combined T1/Bike time, but I know I biked faster than I did 2 years ago. I was stronger on hills and hit a higher top speed on the (few) flats. Fortunately, T2 went much better than T1 and I was off on the run.
I'd spent the last month nursing my achilles back to health and this race was both a test of the achilles and a way to get race ready for next week. As such, I eased off the run just a bit, which also wasn't good since the run is typically my strongest leg and I could have used the extra time. I ended up with the 4th fastest run of the day, but that also lost me places by not going 100%. Still, I felt good and was happy with that.
End result: 5th overall, 2nd 40-44; 2nd place was only 20 seconds ahead, so given the difficulties above, I think things went well. Results can be found here: http://www.plattsys.com/results/res2008/pawling.htm
Now, a quick recovery, a day or two of decent training, then on to Vancouver and the World Championships next Saturay.
Reader Comments (1)
Nice job Dave. Maybe Dom would be kind enough to run a series of transition drills for everyone...