1 mile skied, 500 meters swam, 48 miles biked and 131.7 miles run in 2013 races
Race: Stayton Sprint Tri
Place: Stayton, OR
Miles from home: 63 miles
Weather: 50s; Cloudy; Partially rainy
I signed up for this race solely because of proximity. After many weekends away from home, I wanted to stay local. I also wanted to do a triathlon and try to kickstart what has been a slow-starting 2013. I simply haven’t been able to get on the bike or in the pool and figured the only way I would do both would be to race. So, all the tris and duas and everything in that realm would all be basically workouts. Workouts I pay for. (Kinda dumb, but hey, whatever makes you go.) For example, getting on the bike for this race would mark only the second time I had ridden my bike since September. Of last year. That of course, in no way shape or form keeps me from illogically expecting to do far better than I should.
As the race would start in a pool, it required the swimmer to submit a time that they expected to finish their 500 meter swim in. When all was done, I found out I would be the absolute last swimmer in the absolute last heat of the day. While the race started at 8 a.m., I would start at 11:08:30 a.m. Four swimmers to each of the five lanes with me going dead last. I could tell I wasn’t going to actually enjoy much of this event at all, at least from a competitor standpoint.
In the dozen or so triathlons I have done, only one or two have been of the kind that allows all the athletes to actually be competing against everyone at the same time. I understand in small triathlons this is rarely a problem and in larger triathlons if you are good enough to matter you will be in the fastest wave. Nevertheless, it is something I will never full enjoy. For the most part, there isn't a better ways to actually do the seeding and racing of so many athletes in a confined space but that doesn’t stop me from trying to think of one. It is a complicated sport with many moving parts and I do not envy those who have to put it together, like the nice people in Stayton.
I did, however, appreciate that I would not have to be up at the crack of dawn. I would be able to sleep in a touch, lazily saunter over to the race starting area, prep my bike, get body marked, check out the course and then watch some of the swimmers in front of me. It was all rather relaxed. I tried to see how others were handling the cluster of swimmers in the pool, how they got out of the exchange area and many other things. It was too late to change some of my basic strategy but I saw a few things which would help me in the future. Every second counts! Sooner than I expected it to go by, we were called to the pool’s edge for pre-race instructions.
I found out we would be circling swimming in each lane with ten seconds between each swimmer. I then realized that if those in my lane actually swam what they were claiming to swim, I would have roughly 5 seconds from when I started my lap before the first swimmer in each lane would be doing a flipturn and hunting me down. When it was our turn to hop in the water, I stayed out for a second to observe those in my heat. Two of them looked like they totally belonged there. The third? He didn’t look like he should be swimming at all. I could only hope that his race performance would not reflect his warm up lap.
