Thank god it didn't rain this weekend. It was 445 and my sister and I were on our way to Rochester. It was race day for the third time this year. We had a straight shot of just over an hour to the race destination, which gave us plenty of time to set up my transition and warm up etc.
We got to the park and dropped my stuff off, and went to park at the nearby parking lot. The "lake" we swam in for this race wasn't much of a lake. Let's call it a pond.
So the swim would be a double loop out in the pond. I was in the second wave with about 40 or so other athletes. The water was pretty much perfect for a race. It wasn't too cold and wasn't too warm. The pond was a man made water hole, from a nearby limestone company. That made the water a turquoise like color. When the swim started, it was around 810, I felt good on the first loop, passing people from the wave before me. Once the first was done, we had to exit the water for about 30 yards and then dive back in for the second loop. The second loop seemed just as easy as the first, but I'm sure I was passing people that were in the waves behind me too. Finally exited the water and headed up the beach into transition.
Got the bike and took off. Only wasting about 2 minutes in T1. The bike course was an out and back, which was on mostly good roads. There were lots of rollers and a few larger hills, but I kept it mostly in aero for the ride. At the turn around, immediately you could tell you had a slight tailwind coming out. That always sucks. So the ride back to transition was tough, but I kept the pace up nicely to average about 20.6.
T2 was just over 1 minute long and I wore socks this time in my shoes for the 10k. The run had a few technical stretches to it. We were running in and out, up and down the Zumbro River banks. I started the first 5k with a very solid pace, one I thought I could definitely keep till the end. But that wasn't the case, my pace slipped to a 7:48 for my slowest mile. Eventually evened out for a 7:11 average. Not terrible, but I can do better.
Ending up with 3rd in my age group is respectable for my competition. The results say 1st because the other two raced as elites, which usually does not qualify them for age group awards, just overall. But I guess that wasn't the case here. Third is third and I am happy with it.
Next race is Average Jo, a sprint race in Perham. Should be fun and really fast!
Catch Me If You Can!
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