Mighty Wolf Sprint

My coach, Mike, wanted to get the team together and rock a small local sprint triathlon.  We had a good showing with about 10-12 people, which was pretty cool having the whole team there.  The atmosphere around the race was pretty relaxed.  The race directors explained the course before starting the race and it kind of felt like they would just say “You know, rack your bike and stuff someplace in there, go here, turn around there, come back, yada yada.”  Just a fun race to be at.

This was my first time racing a sprint in a while.  Why? They hurt! I like the longer distance races, not that those don’t hurt or anything.  On the other hand, red lining it for 60 minutes can be lots of fun as well!

I signed up the day of the race and was put in the 5th wave.  Even with the waves only being maybe 30-40 people at a time, it was still a rough swim.  The swim was in a man-made lake and pretty tight.  I caught a stiff elbow in the jaw and had to swim over two people – they kept pushing me outwards (ie, were swimming in the wrong direction).  Sorry! Ha!  Even though the swim was short, I decided to swim in my Zoot SpeedZoot.  I’ve never swam in it yet and wanted to try it out.  It almost makes you feel like you’re swimming nekked.  Nice!

Coming out of the water I just started hammering.  Looking back there were a couple times where I probably could have kept pressure on the pedals, but I wanted to have a good run as well.  Being in the fifth wave leaves you lots of people on cruiser bikes to pass.  Whats even better is that I ride a Zipp 999 wheelset (808 up front, 900 disc in the back) and they’re LOUD!  I love catching up to people and having them look back cause they hear me coming up on them.  Makes me smile everytime.  It was a flat 15 mile ride.  I came in around 35:00 +/- :10, which gave me a split mph avg of 25.7 mph.  I’ll take that!

After a quick T2 it was off running.  I’m not really used to running really fast right away.  I started out pretty easy, then remembered what type of race I was in.  Get ’em going! The course started out running in the grass around a baseball field.  I don’t mind running on grass but this stuff was’t level in the least bit.  I almost fell 3-4 times with the ground dropping from underneath me and running over holes.  Thankfully that didn’t last too long and we got onto the roads.  I had to stop for a split second and yank on my laces to tighten them up.  Then got down to business. At the turn around I found I was the fourth person, but thats somewhat misleading as I started in the fifth wave.  I was ahead of some of them.  Anyways, I ran a bit harder on the way back, through the grass almost falling (again) and finished with a good kick to the finish line.  It was a flat 3 miler that I ran in 16:08.  5:23s.  Yup, I’ll take that as well.

When all the results where compiled I ended up with an overall time of 59:21, placing 2nd Overall and 1st in my AG. So close. For having not done a sprint in such a long time, nor even training even remotely close for a race of this type I’m happy with the results.

Since the race was so short, a few of us took off after the race and rode the Door County 70.3 bike course.  Nice scenery, but some not-so-good roads on the course.  Either way, it should be a fun race in a few weeks!