Three weeks ago I raced at Trinona for
the first time. It was a great time. Their race slogan is “The
World's Biggest Little Triathlon.” Even though there is only 900 or
so people in the race, Dave Schutz puts on a top quality race. It
helps that Winona MN is a great little town in the gorgeous
“driftless” zone of southern Minnesota. Because glaciers didn't
cover this area in the last ice age there are real hills and the race
takes you up one of them, it's a solid mile plus climb right in the
middle of the bike that leaves you winded for a good while. This was
my first race back since working out some form kinks and doing some
strength re-structuring and I was pleased with the second place to
Thompson. Matt Payne, Alex Hook and I pushed each other on the bike
which is always fun.
It was an actually hot day, with the
heat index in the upper 90's and coming off the bike 3+ minutes
behind David I knew I wasn't going to do better than second. That may
have been a good thing though. I took the run easy and instead of
feeling zapped for the next week like I sometimes do I was able to
keep right on training.
Best part of Trinona: the classic
drive-in just off the lake with homemade rootbeer and $1.50
hamburgers. I don't think I've ever tasted anything as delicious as
that float after such a hot race.
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| Running at Minneman courtesy of Kerry Yndestad and YndeCam |
This weekend I did the inaugural
olympic distance Minneman race. Like Trinona, the bike was longer
than standard, about 26 miles, and the swim was a little short, but
it's a very fast course with no hills in it. It seemed hotter than it
was, only in the 80's. I felt better on the swim than I have before
which is always a nice way to start a race. Devon Palmer went way off
course on the swim and I almost followed his pack but realized the
mistake quickly enough to only tack on 20 or 30ish seconds to my
swim. I think if the swim was a full 1500, and I hadn't gone off
course my time would have been somewhere in the low 20 minute range.
One of my big goals this season is to swim in the 19 minute range for
the olympic distance and I'm making progress. Sometimes it's
frustrating and seems like I'll never get there. But I always
remember that when I started running, it took everything I had just
to break 5 minutes in the mile, and after a few years of training I
would run 5k's at 4:35 pace. Rome wasn't built in a day and I'll keep
at it in the pool.
I wanted to bike fast, especially on
this flat course, and decided to really push the pace on the second
of the two bike loops. Looking at my power data afterwards I'm happy
to see that I averaged 276 watts (3.9/kg) for the course. It's hard
to tell because the course is long, but this was strong enough to
average 26.6mph. If it had been the standard 24.8 miles my bike split
would have been somewhere just under 56mins. It's good to see my bike
times continue to drop. Getting in good interval workouts now and
again is really helping with the strength I've lacked on the bike
until this year. Now I can get back to doing some run workouts to get
my legs back under me. I didn't feel very quick on the run, but after
putting in solid miles and bike workouts the past couple weeks it's
not a big concern. There's still plenty of time until Du World's this
September.
Up Next: Lifetime Fitness Tri in
Minneapolis.
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| These squiggly lines show my power profile in the race. Unfortunately I am not tech savvy enough to get the axis labels to show. |
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