Philadelphia Triathlon, Sunday, June 22

Though I felt guilty about not participating in the festivities in Shelton (congrats, teams!), I wanted to defend my master's title in Philadelphia. This is an Olympic distance race, and I was anxious to complete a WHOLE triathlon after the debacle in Vancouver 2 weeks ago.

Race day was overcast early with sun coming out late in the race but tolerable. I was in the 7th wave of the day, and I jumped into the bathtub-temp Schuykill River (75 degrees) at 7:30 am. Good news: a 1 minute improvement (officially...my watch had me a bunch faster) over last year's swim. The training paid off! Unfortunately, I had to put socks on in T1 because (1) I'd ripped a small hole in my foot swimming in the Sound on Friday and (2) the Rube Goldberg bandage contraption I'd created fell off in the water.

Off on the bike, and I felt like I was FLYING. First of two laps in under 32 minutes, was on target for what I thought would be a 62-63 minute bike. However, it was a bit windy and there was traffic on the 2nd loop, and I must have slowed a bit...the bike ended up as 1:04:24, about 30 seconds faster than 2007. T2 was OK.

Off on the run...felt very good, though a slight nag from achilles. Felt fast, but saw 6:10 at first mile. Also saw a guy up ahead I thought was in my age group. Finally caught him at 4 miles, but it turned out he was 20. Ended up running 38:14, a minute slower than last year. THAT needs a bit of work.

Offical time (after yet another socring SNAFU in which my result wasn't posted to the board) was 1:10:09, about a minute ahead of 2007. However, I ended up 3rd Master (the score the first 3 for everyone over 40) this year. Let's start the count down for 45-49 (one more year)!

Next week: Stamford