...well before I start in on the race thank you Mom for coming and cheering me on! It was great to have you there letting me know where I stood and how many people I had to chase down. Alright the race. Lake Mills has an "elite" wave which goes off first thing in the morning so I registered for this wave. It's just nice to be able to truly race against some solid athletes! The swim sucked as it always does. There was quite a bit of wind so the lake wasn't all that calm, and I would say I had an average swim at best. My pace was excruciatingly slow, and I'm not sure why? I guess that just means I have to swim more, and I will work on that all summer, at least 5 swims per week if not more!
T1 was uneventful and I think I did pretty well. I had one of the faster T1's of the day which I'm happy with.
Bike...I have been riding more, and ended up with 50 miles on my single speed yesterday so I'm happy to say that I felt much better on the bike today. I ended up with one of the fastest (3rd I think) bike splits of the day. Right from the start of the race I started passing people and continued to do so until mile 10 when I rode into 4th place. Not too bad when you pass 20+ people on the bike to ride towards the front. I had 3rd place in my sight the whole bike ride but I just couldn't bring him back.
T2 - another solid transition. I put some time into the 3rd place guy and headed off to run.
Run - 3rd place had about a 20 yard gap on me when we came out of T2. I was working like mad to reel him back. I was even alright with bringing it back little by little and then surprising him at the end of the race with a sprint finish. Unfortunately I felt like I was racing a mirror of myself...every time I would surge, he would do the same. My running legs were back today and I ended up running a PR for my 5k time...17:58. That's 27 seconds faster than last year and I'm not as far into my training as I was at the same time as last year, so that's definitely something to celebrate.
Overall I took 4th place and I won my age group. I'm happy with the race, and besides the swim I'm not sure what else I could have done to bring back time besides train more leading up to the race. On that note I'm going to start a 10 day training block where I go and kill some workouts leading up to my next race in 2 weeks. I'm excited to race, and I get to race a half ironman which will be a true test of fitness.
It was great to catch up with Grismer, one of my college soccer teammates and he crushed the race as well taking 2nd in his age group.
1 comment:
Hey Rick! Great meeting you on Sunday in Lake Mills. Congrats on the race and I am looking forward to seeing you at other races along with following you on your quest for Hawaii. Wishing you much success and a great journey.
Arne
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