Planet X Triathlon - June 21, 2009

Sunday morning was the Planet X Triathlon at the Munroe Falls Metropark. Once again, my goal was to beat my time from last year. Thankfully we had a nice day and an early start time of 7:15 am. All of the women went first in one wave and then the men followed in 3 more waves.

Being more comfortable with my swimming ability, I’ve been starting closer to the front lately. I would guess I came out of the water somewhere in the middle of all of the women. Overall I was 59/149 in the swim. I had a pretty fast transition and got comfortable on the bike right away. Until I began riding up the long gradual incline around the corner from the park, I had forgotten about it from last year. Ugh. That slowed me up, but the flats and downhills allowed me to pick up some speed and time. I had some trouble shifting in a couple of places and I thought I was getting a flat on my front tire for the last few miles. Even with my troubles, I finished the bike course 53 seconds faster than last year. The second transition went well; I even remembered my race belt / number – unlike at Clay’s Park. My run felt slow, and again I was having trouble catching my breath. We ran two laps around the lake, and when I saw a woman with “31” on her leg pass me at the ½ way point, I was determined to not let her beat me. I had been counting the women my age, and I thought by letting her go I would be 4th in my age group. So, I stayed about 10 feet behind her for most of the second lap, and then I went all out for the last 200m. I managed to beat her by 4 seconds, but it turns out that was for 4th place. Well, if she hadn’t been there, I’m sure I would have run even slower, so she really did help me out. I looked up her results from last year and it turns out I beat her by 3 minutes in ’08. She really improved! Anyhow, my overall time was 1:18:12, 1 ½ minutes faster than last year. My run was 18 seconds slower than last year, so I guess my swim and transitions must have been better this year!

STATS:
400 yd swim – 7:48
T1 – 1:40
11 mile bike – 38:27 ~17.2 MPH AVG (my bike computer showed 17.6 AVG?)
T2 - :57
5k run – 29:18

4/8 females 30 – 34 (plus the overall female winner was 30)
84/149 overall for men and women