Lake Sammamish Triathlon 2008

Yesterday (8.23.2008) Kyle and I did the Lake Sammamish Triathlon - 300-400 meter swim, 14 mile out and back bike, and 5 k run mostly on grass. The morning started out strange for me - I never heard my alarm but still woke up at 5 am - i guess I set the time but never turned it on. We got to the race on time and got set up. I got to the restroom before to long of a line formed but only half of the toilets were not flushing - super yuck. I started to put my aero bottle on my bike and for some reason though I had forgot my bottle of acceleraide - to the point I went and found a bottle of water to put some nuun to get by for the race. Luckily I finally looked in at my bike bottle cage and saw my bottle of acceleraid...

After all that I went for a 10 min run to warm up and let it go and just get my mind cleared to get ready for the race. Kyle & I met back up before heading down to the beach. The swim seemed super short, way shorter than in 2006 (the last time we did this race). Kyle was in wave 2 so I watched him start and finish the swim - he came out of the water about 10th or so. I had to wait almost 30 min before starting. They had said they were doing 3 min intervals but instead were doing 5+ so it took forever. I seeded myself in the front middle - straight on to the 1st buoy. For some reason the swim was very rough - probably because I was right in the middle of the main pack. I saw the lead pack and was gaining on them but the course was soo short I never did.

T1 was fast I got out of my wetsuit and was off on the bike. They make you run through the grass then over a little hill. The start of the course sucks - they make you ride off road on some trail. The first half mile is very narrow so it hard to really pass people but I did.
I saw Kyle coming in to finish his bike when I was at about 4 mile - there were only a few guys in front of him and a big group behind him. So he seemed to be having a good race - I was just happy to see he had not had a flat or anything. I cranked it up and the bike course went by quickly. I really focused and tried to keep my rpms up in the high 80s to 90s and thus keep my speed up. I drank my acceleraide through out which kept my energy up. I was really proud of myself for staying in my aero bars on all the down hills (not a big deal for most people but huge for me). I passed a ton of people the entire bike - which was good because I was wearing my aero helmet - so it would look dumb to be ridding slow.. I kept the intestacy up all the way to T2.

T2 Kyle was long done and as I was trying to get my shoes changed told me he thought he had come in first for his age group. I mostly just ignore him and got my butt on the run course. The run went really well. My first mile was 7 min even though the course is mostly n grass which happened to be wet and very slippery but I figured the faster I ran the less likely I would really twist my ankle. I kept my cadence kind of short but picked up the pace. I played a lot of mental games to stay focused and keep pushing myself as much as I could. I was soo happy every time I got onto real pavement and off the grass - it was just so much easier to run fast. I passed a lot of people but saw very few from my age group. The last quarter mile or so is on pavement and I picked up the pace all the way to the finish. I was chasing down one girl but ran out of space (she beat me by 8 seconds).

I was super happy I finished 3 minutes ahead of my goal time of 1:20:00 and really pushed myself the entire race. In teh end I wound up 6th in my age group - I was a little bummed because I had hopped to place higher but oh well it was a great race and some really fast/good compitition. Not to mention I PRed from 2006 by almost 12 min...

Final times :
swim 6:16.6 | T1 1:34.5 | bike 44:19.7 | T2 57.3 | run 24:01.0 | overall 1:17:09.1

Kyle did wind up placing 1st in his age group and 11th over all so he was very happy.