Naperville Sprint Triathlon

Today was my fourth consecutive Naperville Sprint Triathlon.  I wasn’t expecting too much from the swim and bike since I haven’t been in the water since this same race last year, and have only biked a handful of times in the same period, but felt fairly confident in my running ability with hoping half marathon training would carry me through.  Well, I guess I was all wrong, since my swim and bike times were only seconds off my fastest splits, and my run was over a minute and a half slower.  And I lost almost another minute in the transitions.

The 400m pool swim start, besides taking almost 40 minutes to get in the water, was fairly uneventful.  I got a good start, and stayed pretty consistent when I wasn’t trying to get around slower swimmers.  I got out of the water, and felt pretty good, a quick look at the clock had me estimate my time around 9:00, which I thought was pretty good for my fitness – official time 8:07.

It’s a decent run from the pool to the transition area, and I was a bit out of practice, so the T1 time was a bit over 4:00.  Then on to the two-loop bike course which had a few hills.  It was also pretty windy this morning on the course, which hurt heading south, but felt great coming back north.  Altogether, I was able to average a 19.7mph speed, with a finish time of 41:42, seven seconds faster than last year.

T2 was pretty uneventful, I switched shoes, grabbed my hat, and was off running in just under 2:00.  As soon as I started running, I knew I was in trouble.  Usually my legs feel sluggish getting off the bike, but my Garmin shows my pace right in line with a normal 5K time.  Today, I felt extra sluggish, and I was barely faster than my normal easy run pace.  I really struggled to stay under 7:45/mi pace for the first half mile, and was able to slowly pick up the pace.  My third mile, I finally felt good and got into the low 6:00/mi range.  There was another runner over the last quarter mile or so who was trying to kick it in around my speed, so we kind of paced each other in, and my final 5K run time was 22:03.

Overall, I was satisfied with my effort, I just envisioned losing time on the swim and bike, not the run.  I finished in 1:18:07, for 249th place overall, out of over 1,700 finishers, and 25th place in my age division.  Considering I was not properly trained for it, I’ll definitely take that.