Morton Plant Meese Sprint Tri Race Report

Whew, out of breath just typing that title. Fortunately the race was not as long. Di's got a great post and pics of the race - worth checking out! We had Luke and his family there cheering us on (Luke has a hernia left over from Madiera Beach Tri in May), and GEL volunteered out as kayak support.

For the Bigun, nothing special to report. I thought I had placed, but in the last minute they posted a guy who lost his timing chip, bumping me from 5th to 6th for the old Clydesdales. I was pretty psyched there to get some bling, too. Oh well.

This is one of the biggest sprints around - there's a pro prize purse, so that tends to bring out all the athletes. On the Clydesdale side, there were 55 starters total, split pretty evenly between the under and over 40 age groupings. Here's a look at the old guy's top group:

I added what the bike speeds amounted to and the run paces for some of the guys. I keep telling Excel Man that even though the swim is a short part of the race, when you come out of the water 3 or 4 minutes behind, it's difficult to make that up. Again this was the case for me for this race. Now if I had a bike and run like Larry... well, Larry barely weighs 200lbs as well. I've got to lose some more weight! Speaking of the swim, interestingly, I crushed Excel Man by 11 seconds. He had the luxury of starting 15 minutes before me, and a whole lot less people to swim though. This race had a bunch of newbies in it - and as the waves wore on, the water got pretty crowded with back, side and breast swimmers. We swam into the current, making for a bit slower pace than my last sprint, just over 2 minutes per 100 yds.

The bike, however, found me lacking today. My run out of transition with my bike was so long, I thought I'd try something different today - I ran with my shoes in my hand, and put them on over the bike mount line. Not recommended. Didn't save any time and it ruins your bike split numbers with a falsely quick T1 and added seconds to your bike. Plus, I had to get out of the way, and it was just a silly move. I picked up a shell on the ball of my right foot during that run, and it stayed there for the whole bike - pretty annoying.

The bike was over a quiet a few bridges and 2 really tall ones. The Bigun loses his bike prowess in the hilly stuff. Even beyond the bridges, the course had a roller feel to it, plus some sharp turns. On the first bridge, a woman came wizzing by me on the down hill, that we could plainly see had a sharp left at the base of it. I was riding my brakes, and made the turn easily. She went over the curb to my right and straight into the hedges - she didn't get hurt as she had slowed down enough, but it had to be embarrassing. I still managed a 21mph bike spit which was faster than I expected with my 8mph speeds at the top of the bridges. Excel Man was in the high 21's, the son-of-a-gun.

T2 went much better, and I got out on the run. UG - the first mile or so was soft sand on the beach. Not where the waves hit the sand - "inland" sand. So that hurt the run split. All I could do was push hard and keep working to keep my pace under 9. Unfortunately I didn't seem to reel too many in on the bike, and even fewer on the run. I guess, I just picked up 5 places total over the course of the race, from leaving the water to crossing the finish line.

This was race #3 in 4 days, suffice it to say, this was not an "A" race. Not too bad for racing tired, though, and I think I've finally figured out that I need to practice T1 with my shoes already in the pedals. I need to keep on swimming; that seems to be a trend to my race reports. And since I've not broken 10 training run miles in a week in a few weeks, I really need to start running again. It's just so dang hot!