Crohnic Triathlete, Esq.: TRIANGLE ORTHOPEDICS SRPINT RACE AND UPDATE (APRIL 18

I was not too pleased with my performance at Memorial Texas 70.3. After a week of rest and recovery, I was back to full training with a new focus on running. Why running? Well, I seemed to have lost my run in my move across country. Hopefully I will find it soon.

The week of training went well. I continued to swim well and put together some strong rides. The key workout was a track/treadmill workout consisting of 13 X 800s on Thursday night. After the workout my legs were toast, super tired. It felt great.

Through a friend a learned of a local sprint triathlon scheduled for Saturday, so I decided to give it go. I want to work on my transitions and just get more racing under my belt. I'm still a little rusty when it comes to some of the finer points of racing, such as, swim starts and T1 and T2 transistions (swim to bike and bike to run, respectively).

With my legs still sore from Thursday workout, I woke up early Saturday morning headed over to NC State.

TRIANGLE ORTHOPEDICS SPRINT TRIATHLON 54:l9 (Course Record)

Swim -- 9:05 (2nd Fastest Swim; 9:04 fastest swim of the day)
The one aspect of this season that has been going very well is my swimming. At the beginning of the year I thought it was going to be my weakness, but through the first 4 months of training, I have made huge improvements and I am almost back to my 2006 form. I credit Dave Williams and his Tuesday/Thursday pro tri swim workouts. The workouts are great, the fellow athletes super training partners, and the combination of the two have me swimming fast.

The plan for this swim was to swim with a friend and fellow pro swim training partner. In the pool Thys is a bit stronger of a swimmer than I, so I just wanted to jump on his feet and stay with him through the 750 meters. As we warmed up, Thys pointed out another athlete that was strong, so now I had two sets of feet to swim on. The gun sounded and we were off. We swam the first 250 meters at a nearly all out pace. At 300 meters I jumped on the feet of the other competitor and we swam together the rest of the way. I exited the water one second behind the first swimmer and had a good lead on most of the other competitors. This was a great swim for me.

Bike -- 25:33 (Fastest Split of the Race)

Start of the Bike. I get up to speed then put the feet
into the shoes

I had a quick transition and was the first athlete onto the bike. Now in first, I wanted to stay there. The plan here was simple, ride the bike as hard as I could and build a lead. The course was fun, with some rolling hills that made it challenging. I rode the first 10 minutes of the ride at an almost all-out pace before I settled into a more comfortable pace. With no fellow athletes in sight, I headed into T2 to transition to the run.

Run -- 17:32 (Fastest Split of the Race)

Not sure what to write about the run other than it's still missing. The run was around the NC State campus, it had some challenging hills and my legs definitely felt the track workout I did on Thursday. I settled into a decent pace and worked on pushing through the hills and running strong. I came through 3 miles in 16:48 (see Garmin file below) and the 5K course in 17:32.

I had built a good size gap on the bike and increased my lead by about 40 seconds on the run. In the end I came away with the win by 3:08, with my friend and training partner Thys coming in second.

On Sunday, I followed up the race with a nice ride and saw more of the great riding here in Chapel Hill.

In all it was a fun week. Elizabeth's parents were in town so they were there supporting me on Saturday, and Elizabeth and I had a fun time with them over the weekend.