Jackson County Triathlon Race Report - Long Course

John says 4:30 in the morning is too early to get up for a race. It is a little early when you have to wait for the sun to come up to pump up your tires.
For the last few weeks (or maybe months) I have had a hard time sticking to my training. Blame it on my job or whatever, I just hadn't trained for this race as much as I wanted to. Then, in typical pre-race fashion, I went over my predicted time and when I compared that to last year's results, that would put me at 2nd to last in my AG. Wow. So I set my goal time at 2:30 and hoped I wouldn't be last. That would be a serious mental blow at this point. I was going to race to finish, but I'm tired of that, I wanted to RACE. So I did.
Swim caps come with attitude. (Actually I was cold from a dip in the lake).
Scuba Steve! I can't believe he actually had a snorkel. I'm pretty sure that's against USAT rules. Then again, if you need a snorkel, the swim probably isn't much fun.

It was a 2 loop swim with a beach run. I prefer one long swim, but it was fine. My swim time was my slowest swim to date, but I'm going to blame it on the beach running.
After the swim, I hopped on the bike and tried to catch the ultra-fast women in my head. If I didn't pass someone, I was sure to come in last. So I biked hard and went pretty aggressively through the hills. I love passing men on expensive bikes, especially when I know their wave was at least 5 min ahead of mine. Here's a glimpse of the bike course. I really enjoy riding through the country and by the lake. The course was completely closed to traffic, which was AWESOME!! I thanked every police officer and volunteer I passed.
The Bridge of Death. Ok, so I'm exaggerating. We had to stop, dismount, and run our bikes across for safety reasons, and I'm glad the RD did it that way. This was right after some tight S-curves. I only know of 1 guy that wiped out and it was his own fault for not slowing down.

I had a great bike leg and then took off on the 5 mile run. My legs felt better than I had hoped but my stomach was acting up. Big surprise. I skipped the aid stations until the turn around point and by then my stomach was fine. I was passed by a few women, but that's typical. Come to find out, second through fifth place were within 2 minutes. But I couldn't have made that up (unless I had been training like I should have). It was probably my best race to date and I know I went hard and didn't hold back. I was 110/235 overall, 12/50 women and 5/13 in my age group. That's like winning for me. Not in last place by a long shot. Here are my overall splits:

S: 25:36 (2:33 min/100m)

T1: 1:29

B: 1:13:57 (20.7 mph!!!!)

T2: 1:22

R: 42:25 (8:29 min/mile)

Total: 2:24:47

I have to point out that I never have broken 20 mph for an average speed on the bike. But I also think I need to recalibrate my bike computer since it was way off the results from today. Good tech t-shirt that actually fits. I may do this one again next year and really try to make it on the podium. I will sleep happy tonight.