The Ups and Downs of Sunday 

I did the Pewaukee Lake Triathlon on Sunday, and survived. They used a different timing group than the other tri's I've done, so the results are only available in one big PDF file (I'm Bib #102 if you're interested).

So here's my personal breakdown on what happened. I had a better swim time than I've ever had which was great. I cut a minute off my last two swims. The bad part was that my first transition was kinda slow. The bike section was actually longer than the other two I'd done, but I still did it in a really good time, despite the fact that it was pretty hilly and challenging. During the last 1/3 of the race I had been battling back and forth with one guy (we kept re-passing each other). Then as we came to some railroad tracks just before a 90 degree turn he was ahead of me, and lost it. He was taking a really wide line for the turn, then saw the tracks and tried to straighten out to go over them. He made it over them, but then lost it in the turn and went into a ditch at probably close to 25 mph. Ouch. Amazingly as I blew by him he was getting out of the ditch and back on his bike, but I never saw him again.

The run sucked. It was very challenging with a lot of up hill, and the first mile was a lost cause for me because my calves kept cramping up. Eventually I was able to run through it and got a decent pace for miles 2 and 3, but I was 4 minutes slower than I wanted overall. The run is definitely my weakest event, and I need to really work hard to get better.

My final time was 1:35:15.0. I actually finished in the upper half of my age group which is the best I've done in general. So not only did the course have it's ups and downs, but so did my performance.

Later I'll discuss some things I specifically noticed with how "Real Triathletes" tend to bike. It really makes me sick.