Clermont Recap and Exercising Patience

2013 is officially on! Every winter I spend months training without any real racing and for some reason at the end of every winter I have an absurd fear that I won't be fast anymore. I know that it doesn't make any sense but I even have dreams about it. What if I'm doing all these workouts and think that I'm going to be faster than last year, but when I step up to the starting line I just don't have it anymore?

Putting this annoying fear to rest is always a priority for the first race of the season and this weekend I was able to do that at the Clermont Draft Legal Challenge. The race was early Saturday morning, 8:30 eastern time. It was a sprint distance of 750m swim, 20k bike and 5k run. There was 75 people in the race. 75 guys doesn't sound like a lot, except that all 75 of us start at the same time, and the distance to the first buoy was only 300m, and it was a U25 Elite Development Race, so almost everyone was fast all things considered. On top of all of that I put off registering until the very last minute and each person gets to pick their position on the start line based on when they signed up, so I had a terrible start position right in the middle of the field trying to squeeze in half a step behind two other guys. The first 200 meters was closer to a wrestling match than a swim, complete with swallowing plenty of lake water, getting kicked in the face, swimming over people and getting swum over.

Despite all this, I finally kept my cool in a race, found some open water and got back into decent swimming form. Up until now I have always took off sprinting at the gun and shot myself in the foot with sloppy technique. I could feel myself losing form and kept refocusing on a strong connected pull. I came out of the water in 20^th and was right on the tail end of the first pack getting on the bike. With the draft legal format this made all the difference for me. I couldn't be happier with the swim progress that I've made over the winter.

The bike was four 5k loops with a 180 degree turnaround at one end and a tight circle through transition at the other. My Florida training partner Jake Rhyner and I pushed the pace on the bike to make sure that the first chase pack didn't catch us before the run. I love the draft legal format, the pace is constantly accelerating and decelerating with people moving up and down the pace-line. 20 kilometers of biking goes by in what feels like 2 minutes.

The best part of draft legal racing: the bike.

Coming off the bike 5 or 6 guys put a really hard effort into leading out the run and opened up a couple seconds gap. I panicked, thinking that I was going to get left in the dust, and tried to pick up my cadence to stay as close as possible. After about a quarter of a mile they all started to slowly come back and I kept trying to move my feet as fast as possible. My final run time was a little slower than I had hoped for, 16:28, but for this time of year it's a good start.

Results are here: http://www.allsportsevents.com/Results/triathlon_results/ClermontChallengeDay12013.html#/results::1363039210251

I will be racing as an amateur through HyVee this year. It was a tough decision but I'm certain that it was the right move. Racing professionally is like running a small business. I know that as much progress as I have made, I still have work to do before I will be a contender. If I spent the spring traveling and racing as a pro I would likely make almost no money and would certainly have less consistent training. Instead, I will spend another half of a year focused on getting all of the details right and making steady progress training. I've been getting a lot of crap for not racing pro, but the choice between stalling my development to make very little money and buckling down for some hard work and getting faster yet with a very good chance at winning $26k at HyVee is a pretty easy one. Patience is a virtue.