Rain, lightening and WIND! Despite a few weather glitches, about 250 triathletes, duathletes, and 5K runners and walkers competed at the Markey Race for Womens Cancer at Spingletop Hall in Lexington, KY.
After a 30 minute weather delay, the swim kicked off. I was number 86 and in the 8min 400m group. Everything went pretty well the first few laps and then there was a traffic jam because someone misjudged their swimming proficiency and was holding a bunch of us back. After a woman blew past, over, under all of us, I decided I needed to move forward so I asked to woman in front of me if I could pass at the wall. I then snuck past the slow guy with 2 laps to go and finally got to swim a little until I ran up on the guy side stroking. Very frustrating because the slower swimmers put me almost a minute off of what I could have done it in. Knowing how fast you can swim seems important so you don't jam up everyone behind you. I liked the woman who blew past, over, under all of us. She was obviously not new to the sport. Lesson learned.
The bike went pretty well on the way out (18.8MPH), but the wall of wind on the way back was a bit challenging on a mountain bike where my 6' frame was like a big wind sail (14.5MPH), with an average of 16.9. We made it through it and I thought I was doing pretty well as I had passed the one woman I had seen in my age group. She was a tiny, wirey little thing though so I figured she would be a good runner and I pedaled like crazy into the wind trying to get as much of a lead as I could.
I made it through T2 in front of the other woman but she passed me pretty quickly on the run. I maintained about an 8:25 pace which for me is pretty good at this stage of the game. There have been some changes in the results since yesterday and it appears that I ended up in fifth place. This wasn't quite was I hoping for but with my mountain bike, the wind and the swimming hold up I'm still pretty happy with it all. As always, I learned a lot and had a great time.
http://www.markeyraceforwomenscancer.com/
Photos of the Markey Race for Womens Cancer Triathlon
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comments
