Rip Roarin' Ride / Austin Marathon Relay

Like last year, my company sponsored entry into the Liberty Hill Lions' Rip Roarin' Ride on Saturday, and/or the Silicon Labs Austin Marathon Relay on Sunday. I may have taken the "play hard" concept too far by planning to do the maximum distance in both events- 103 miles and 12 kilometers, respectively. I figured it would be good training for the upcoming half Ironman I will be attempting. Despite "only" riding 87 miles, my legs were cooked, quite unfortunately, before I was finished running. However, other than major soreness, I don't seem to have injured myself, and I have gained additional training and experience.

Last Splash & Dash of the Season

Continuing my streak of beating my expectations (Lost Pines, Austin Tri, Wurst Tri), last night's final Splash & Dash for the year was my quickest yet- both the swim + transition and the run. Thanks to heavier than expected traffic, I barely made it in time. I had only a couple of minutes to get my shoes laid out and my swim cap and goggles on. I was glad for a couple minutes' delay of the usually punctual 6:00 start to have a chance to settle down and prepare myself. After the first ~50 meters, I swam the whole course breast stroke. I wore a different top than I have previously, and at least initially felt as though it might have slowed me down some, as I didn't feel like I was getting any glide from my stroke. It felt better later in the course, so maybe it was either my perception or the wind (not that it was particularly strong). Just based on the others in the water, it seemed like I was having a good swim: I seemed to be somewhere in the middle of the men, and only saw a couple of women (who started 3 minutes after the men). Once I was out of the water and started on the run, I had the quantifiable data: My swim + transition time was 15:59, shattering my previous best of 17:45. I started running at too quick of a pace, spurred on by the faster company. I pulled it back to a more reasonable pace for the rest of the first 1k lap, second lap, and most of the third lap (I had just enough left for a sprint finish). My lap times were 5:05, 5:16 and 5:08, which together improved on my previous best run of 16:01. My full course time of 31:29 was amazingly a full 3 minutes off of my previous best (in July). Not only am I pleased with my time, I was pretty stoked that I was not that far behind my friend MG, who's been at it for a lot longer. For the first time, I exited the water before her (her being 2 minutes quicker swimming wasn't enough to overcome the 3 minute head start), and she passed me near the end of the second lap of the run and beat me by 3:38 overall.

Wurst Tri Ever

For the third straight weekend, I competed in a triathlon (the others being the sprint distance Lost Pines Tri and Olympic distance Austin Tri). Amazingly, my body held together for the most part, and for the third straight week I beat my goal finishing time. My goal for this race was to beat my time from Jack's Generic Tri of 1:18, to make this my quickest sprint distance triathlon (different courses aren't exactly comparable, but still). This race was produced by the same people that did Lost Pines, and again had a relatively small field (250+ participants), but it seemed to have attracted some higher caliber athletes from San Antonio. There was a bloc that took home most of the top awards, leaving my time of 1:16:59 16th overall and second in my age group.

Austin Triathlon

Today I completed my second Olympic-distance (1500m swim, 40k bike, 10k run) triathlon, the Austin Triathlon, and I'm quite pleased to have significantly improved on my CapTex time from just over three months ago. The course isn't exactly the same, so they're not 100% comparable, but I did improve on every split time for an overall time of 2:43:34. Of course, with the much larger (1000+ for the Olympic distance) and more competitive field (including several Ironman champions), I didn't place nearly as high in the overall standings as my last race, but 313th puts me in the top half, so not too shabby in my book.