Over the last month or so, my life has been more than chaotic... way more than I have ever experienced, at least in the last 3 years... In a period of about two weeks, I landed a job at the University of South Carolina, found a place to live, made it back to Ttown, packed up my apartment in about three days, and headed East... Found my way to Columbia, SC where the tagline is "Famously Hot"... with temps well above 100 (high as 108+) for the first two weeks I was here, "famously hot" didn't do it justice...
And the heat wasn't all... Columbia is hilly... much hillier than I'm used to, or even prefer... I'm not good on hills, even worse on hills in the heat... So, when I got here, I had to dial things waaaaayy back, just to get some sort of base in before trying to pick back up racing...
I had little motivation to keep training when I moved to Columbia... the heat was an issue, obviously, but when compounded by my lack of knowledge of the community, it made getting outside to train almost unbearable... I missed Ttown, its simplicity, and its wealth of good training opportunities... I went on a few group rides and a group run, but nothing quite "felt like home" to me, and I was starting to get into a funk about it all...
In an effort to break out of this "funk", I decided to race a sprint, just to see how I'd do on a gross lack of training and on an even bigger lack of desire to train (and race)... I found a local sprint right outside of Columbia and decided to pull the trigger a mere three days before the race...
The race itself was the Tom Hoskins Memorial Sprint Triathlon, held at the YMCA in Irmo, SC... It was a 350 yd pool swim, 12 mile bike, and a 5k... I figured I could go hard for 1:10+, and still have time to enjoy the rest of my Saturday... come to find out, I did nothing the rest of the day because of how hard I went!
So, without further ado, here's the race recap
2012 Tom Hoskins Memorial Sprint Triathlon, Irmo, SC.
Swim:
The race website said they'd seed swim times based on 100m... I contacted the RD and managed to convince him to seed me, even though I had missed the registration deadline... I gave him a time of 1:35, since I regularly come in at 1:40 on 100m LCM...
Surprise, surprise... the pool is short course...
Time to grind...
Swim:
Hop in during a break and take off... being a pool swim, and short course at that, I knew that I had no other choice but to red line it the whole way... Don't worry about saving anything for the run to T1 or for the bike... It's a sprint, time to hurt...
Managed to not get passed by anyone in the water... flip turns at the wall and I'm out of the water in a time of 4:48, which even surprised me... I figured I'd hit 5:++, so coming out of the water under 5 was reassuring... Also managed to grab the quickest swim time out of all of the Clydes, and about 7th or so OA...
 |
| Heading out of the pool into T1... |
T1: Fairly uneventful...short run down a hill to the parking lot, and, since I had registered late, I was blessed with a rack spot nowhere close to bike out, but close to swim out... Throw on the helmet and sunglasses and trot my way to bike out, knowing that the bike course was going to be super fast... (or so I thought)... T1 time of 1:02...
Bike:
I had been told that the bike started with a false flat, then went down hill, then uphill a bit.. So, I figured I'd hop on the bike, pedal to the downhill, then worry about getting my feet into my shoes... Did just that and tucked into my aerobars... Time to hammer this "rolling hills" course (or so I thought)
The bike was A LOT tougher than I anticipated... my HR was jacked and I was worried I was pushing too hard and would tank the run, as I am apt to do... "Ehh", I thought, "Just try to keep cadence high and worry about HR later..." Seemed to work...
The course itself was decent-- paved well until about mile 4.5, then it got a little hairy until the turnaround... The turnaround itself was brutal, because you bomb a hill right before hitting the turnaround, so I had to stand a good bit of the ways after the turnaround...
My legs and lungs were on fire and I knew that my run was going to suffer, but I pressed on, trying to catch whoever was in front of me like I was racing for an overall slot (what an idiot)... There were no USAT officials on the course, so as you can imagine, there was a fair bit of pack riding from the slower racers...
Coming into T2, I knew I had roughly 25+ minutes left on my race... time to do cobble together anything that resembled a decent run...
 | |
| Coming into T2, already destroyed... |
T2:
Again, nothing eventful... time of 0:56... I know my transitions could use some work... back in 2010, I was killing it with time of less than 30s... now, it's a miracle if i make it out before 1:00...
Run:
On the way out of T2, I knew the run was going to be a shitshow...
 | ||
| Leaving T2, already well aware that I could very well lose a podium spot because of what was about to happen... |
So the run course was an out and back jaunt, with a few rollers thrown in just to piss me off enough to the point where I considered walking to bring my HR down... I'm the first to admit, I am the world's worst when it comes to pacing the first mile off the bike... Kendrick always tells me to not run faster than about 9:00min/mi pace, but I inevitably end up pushing much harder than that, and it always comes back to haunt me... I guess mentally, I think that if I don't run a sub-9 mile, I'm going to lose position... or maybe that my open 5k miles are much faster than 9 mins so I know I can do better... or maybe I'm just too dumb to know my own limits.. (probably the last one)
Click off mile 1 in 8:45, which I felt ok with because it was still fairly conservative... the next half mile or so was a long climb, so mile 2's pace stayed about the same (8:46)... The road was a) not closed to traffic and b) REALLY sharply crowned, so running in the middle of the road was at times a bit difficult... I can't remember if I passed anybody on the run, but I do know I got passed by a few people, one in particular who basically "buzzed" me with an open fucking road... what a dick...
Hit the turnaround and it was mostly a downhill run until the finish line, even though it felt like torture! Managed a very respectable mile 3 split of 8:31... the last bit of the run went off the road and onto a gravel path behind the Y, around their soccer field and finished up near their outdoor "splash pad"... I knew I was doing well when I looked at my overall time and it was only around 1:10... my goal with my last few races was to finish in 1:10 or better, but with this race, I figured anything around 1:12-1:13, based on last year's results, would put me close to the podium (then again, you never know who's going to show up to race until the results are in)...
The last .10 of a mile, I hit a PR pace of 6:47, and felt. every. step.... As I came down the last stretch of sidewalk, I saw the RD Joe and another guy who said, "Man, that guy KILLED the bike", to which I responded, "I'm paying for it now!"... I saw the race clock ticking close to 1:15 or so, so I opened it up... which produced the "best of the worst" race pics as seen below
 | |||
| Absolutely destroyed... last kick down the chute... |
Cross the finish line in 1:12:13... and felt damn good about it!
I knew I had done well, but didn't know just HOW well until about half an hour later... after I finished, I did a cool down walk, then went directly to the splash pad and just soaked for a little while... Decided to get cleaned up in the Y and stick around to see what the results looked like...
Boy, I'm glad I did...
As the finishers kept coming in, I saw that I had clinched the Clyde's division, hanging 1:29 on 2nd place... I'm not going to lie... it felt great... really really great... great because not only had I finally won my division at a race, but I had done so as a relative unknown new kid, and had done so in a pretty convincing manner... I was always surprised at how well I raced given my gross lack of training since moving to SC... Mind you, I think I could have done a heck of a lot better if I would have been trained up, but seeing that I could still manage to race a sprint on lackluster training was pretty nice...
Although there wasn't an actual podium, and no fancy awards, I held my head pretty high that day...
 |
| Repping my first LBS, Velo City Pro Cycle in Tuscaloosa... Joe's wife, Erin, said, "Well I guess you have to join the Y now, don't you?" |
 |
| That's right... a coffee mug as an award... get off me.. |
So, that's how my first Clydesdale win unfolded... not the best race to date, but certainly not the worst either.. I'm settling into life in SC and am looking forward to training and racing in a new community...
Now if I could just find the engine I need!
Thanks for reading...
No comments:
Post a Comment