I was suppose to be running Catherines FA 50K in Massanutten last weekend but with my lack of running and poor condition along with the injuries I made the decision to drop my name from the race and let someone else have my spot. I still had the weekend free so I decided to accompany my friends Bill and Margherita over to Burlington Saturday for a little Tri fun.
I have been continuing with all my treatments for the periformis and hamstring issues and have finally started to see some real improvement. I've been getting in several 5 mile runs in each week as well as the cross-training. Fortunately the swimming and the biking don't cause any pain or further damage so I can do it as frequently as my schedule will allow. Even with the Ironman still a long time away, I know I need to work on the other disciplines a lot and the sprint tri seemed like a fun way to do it. With only a 5 K run I wasn't worried about hurting myself.
I was up way too early and then met the Scotts at their home at 4:45. By 5 we were on the road making good time and arrived at the race site by 6:30 giving us plenty of time to check in and set up in transition. It was a beautiful morning but a bit humid. Just before the start I climbed into Lake Cammack to warm up a little. The water felt great and was a fairly clean lake. Bil and I are in the same age-group now so we lined up in the water together when it was time for our wave to get ready. At the horn we took off but Bill pulled ahead quickly and that was the last I would see of him until the finish. There was the usual jostling in the swim until the first buoy and then I was able to settle in to a comfortable stroke.
This was my longest continuous swim since I started back 6 weeks ago going to the Y so I was very happy to feel smooth and comfortable in the water. I was beginning to tire a little at the end but did ok. We think the swim was a little long but that's not unusual to have a bit of diffenrce in the swim from year to year.
The bike course was a fairly moderate course with a few hills. none were too long or steep but I still haven't spent much time on the bike and none in over two weeks so I think I had actually done 6 rides since my first one in three years last month. I do pretty good on the flats where not much power is need because of my high endurance level from years of ultrarunning but as soon as there is any incline I just don't have any power. I was pedaling my little heart out there on the course and thought I had done ok until I saw the results. I was 24th out of 24 in my age-group on the bike.
The run went a little better and also a little better than in Wake Forest last month. Still hard to run off the bike but I had a little more life in the legs. I just need to start doing some bike-run bricks in training as well as more events. the run course was two loops and 2/3'rds of it was on a double-track trail so at least it was shady. There were several short steep hills , especially at the end of each loop and again I had no power climbing.
Overall it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed spending the time with Bill and Margo.
I forgot to take the camera so no photos I'm afraid. You can go to the race website here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the results
No comments:
Post a Comment