Tri Duo

For my second triathlon, I picked the Buzzard's Bay Triathlon at beautiful Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA.

I did my packet pickup on Saturday afternoon, the day before the race and took a moment to walk to the water and examine the swim course. They had yet to setup buoys, but it was clear from the wind and swell direction, we would be swimming against the long-shore current. Oh well, nothing I hadn't done before in ocean swimming and still determined to execute better on the swim this time, we drove the bike course on the way to the sporting goods store to pick up some gels.

I had actually run the bike course a few years prior in the Horseneck Half Marathon - it's basically the same route. Although this time, road construction on the connector road would make things much more difficult. It's not hard to run around dug-up pavement, potholes and new asphalt, it's quite another to take delicate road bike tires over that mess at speed. Fortunately, it was between miles 5 and 7 and that's the rolling hills part of the course so I didn't exepct to be tucked away in aero position barely able to react to construction obstacles.

To complete the trifecta of additional challenges, the run would take us out over the exposed breakwater road to Gooseberry Island and with the expected, steady, southeast wind on race day, the entire "out" of the out-and-back would be into a headwind. Well, at least we'd have a tailwind blowing us home.

After a 6am wake up and good breakfast, I was at the beach getting my numbers applied and racking my bike by 7:30am. I had time to wander about, people watch and take a 15 minute rest in my car. The southeast wind was steady and with overcast air temps in the 60's F and rain expected by midday, it was a cool morning. I returned to check on my transition setup around 8:20, 10 mintues before closing and heard rumors of a swim change.

I walked to the swim (and overall race) finish by the pavilion and heard the announcement, they were indeed changing the swim. Upon review, they decided to reverse the swim - we would start at the finish and finish at the start. This was indeed a welcomed change. Now we would swim from left to right, meaning buoys and shore would be on our right and since I mainly breath to my right, sighting would be a whole lot easier. Add to this the wind and current direction, and this would probably be my quickest ocean swim ever - over before it barely began. Of course the knock-on effect would be we were swimming a quarter mile away from the transition, and since the tranision is already about a quarter mile away from the original swim finish (now the start) we'd now have a half-mile run from the swim finish to the transition. Given my love for running, could this get any better!

We separated into our start waves - I was in the middle of the pack with the 40-59 year old male group. At 9am the elites and colleage athletes started, and then the rest of us age-groupers started inching towards the start in two-by-two fashion, one pair every 10 seconds. I hit the water at about 9:20am. With water temperatures at about 70F this time of year (after summer) and the cooler air temperature - and of course, my wetsuit, - it was actually easy to get going. It was just about low tide so the collection of soupy, red seaweed was minimal and I was able to dolphin dive to the first buoy before I had to start swimming. There was some chop, but minimal really, and sighting was easy to the next buoy. As expected this swim was easy and further highlighted that I need to spend some time open water swimming in fresh water since (at least psychologically - in my mind) it's different. I rounded the furthest middle buoy and headed for the last and the swim finish. As I rounded the last buoy and took a breath, I could see an athlete to my right standing. I put my foot down and sure enough we were only in about 4 feet of water. A few more quick, powerful strokes to catch a small swell and I road a small wave a few extra feet before standing in thigh deep water to start the run out and back towards transition. A 6:42 quater mile, surely my faster ever, though with the wind and current assist, I don't think I can count it!

I stripped the top of my wetsuit and tied the arms, secured my goggles, nose clip and swim cap, and dashed barefoot the half mile to the bike transition. The added step of stripping the wetsuit (something I didn't have to do on my last triathlon due to not wearing one) didn't add much time, so I was out pretty efficiently, save for the shoe tying (again, no bike shoes so I was wearing my running shoes on the bike which would save time in transition 2). The bike course had a mandatory slow down / single file rule as we crossed the grated drawbridge on the way out (planks were laid on the side for us to ride over). After that, I tucked in and pushed the next few miles to the construction zone. Having driven the bike course the previous day, I was aware of the more favorable lines to take in avoiding the worst of the uneven pavement and I actually passed quite a few people through the rolling hills and construction mess before turning on Horseneck Rd. to head back towards transition 2. This part is a very slight uphill on smooth road for a few miles before a quick decent towards East Beach Rd. and the turn to the bike finish. This is where the aero-equipped, TT bike riders started passing me. Overall, I lost about 40 spots on the bike, but spoiler alert, I would make up 60 spots overall on the run.

The transition 2 was quick as expected, drop the bike, grab the race belt and start running. I had the second fastest T2 in my age group. Once on the road out to Gooseberry Island, the wind hit my in my face - as expected. But, there were so many groups and people in front; like targets, I started hunting them down. One-by-one, not a single person passed me on the 5K run and I was able to clock a sub 21-minute 5K after the swim and bike. Not my best time, but slightly better than expected.

Overall, the change of swim layout really improved my expected time. Add to that a slightly better run than expected, and my anticipated goal of 1 hour, 23 minutes (half of my 2 hour, 47 minute Olympic distance time) was a gross under-estimate of performance. I finished in 1 hour, 16 minutes, 40 seconds for 89th overall and 8th in my age group. Happy results for my first sprint and second ever triathlon!