Pinehurst Race Report (pre-results)

The Pinehurst Triathlon was yesterday. The weather was marginal for spectators but great for race conditions. About 55 degrees at the start with 72 degree water. After the swm I was surprised to see the wide variety of racing clothes chosen for the bike. Saw one or two riders without shirts and at least a dozen with rain gear or riding jackets on. For me, my Mountain Hardware full sleeved weatherproof, breathable, lightweight pullover was perfect for both bike and run. Best piece of clothing I own.

My personal results were triathlon-marginal but very satisfying to me. I don't have official results yet and I forgot to start my watch in the nervousness of standing in the water at the start... Overall I feel pretty good about my first Internation distance and only second triathlon. Distances covered in about 2:38 = 1500m swim, 25mile bike, and 10k run.

Swim: My swim went OK (I swam the whole way freestyle/crawl!) as I got off course a few times and I'm sure my form was lousy on the second half. I was fired up to see my wave of light blue swim caps all around me for the first half of the swim. After that I got a little crooked and ended up seeing more caps of the wave behind me around than my own wave. I will be very curious to see where I finished the swim relative to my age as well as overall.

Transition 1: Mediocre. Put my helmet on before my shirt so I had to rewind a bit. I didn't want to particularly hurry. Ate a few Clif Shots as well. I wasn't freaked out at all, which is good!

Bike: Had a great time hammering away at about 90% of max perceived effort. I'm still riding the road bike that is better fit to my wife (we bought it for her) but adjusted for me. I put a longer stem on it and moved the seat post up and seat back long ago to better fit me. Regardless, there was great satisfaction passing one or two solid disk wheels and generally passing vs getting passed on what I'd guess as a 3:1 ratio. Those who passed me were generally flying aboard awesome machines. My finish was strong as I picked it up for the final 5 miles. At the end I still had a lot of gas in the tank ready for the run. 19.1mph average on the bike.

Transition 2: Mediocre but better than T1. Ate some more Clif Shots and sat down to take off my cycling shoes. Not in a particular hurry on this one either. Smooth but slow.

Run: Lets work backwords on this one...After feeling pretty relaxed as I crossed the finish line I think its safe to say I didn't run a max effort. I passed at least 75 or 100 runners and I was passed twice. Once by a 17 year old and once by a 24 year old. I made back at least 15 places on my age bracket with what felt like an 85% effort. It sure is nice that they write ages on the back of the competitors legs so we can all see which age groupers we're passing in the run (and which age groupers pass "us" on the bike).

Thanks to all the volunteers and congrats to all the competitors and especially to my friends from the Finley YMCA. There were about 6 or 8 of us racing. Check out the pic as its not likely you'll be seeing the Trek SLR for much longer. I'm getting fitted for the superbike this week!!! More on that and official Pinehurst results coming this week. Oh, and I'm not sore at all. Feel like I could go on a big ride or run today if it was in the Plan...but its not so it will be family and "honey-do" day.