Jack's Generic Triathlon

Today I raced in the tenth annual Jack's Generic Triathlon, for my second time. I'm pleased with how it went, I cut almost four minutes off of last year's time for a total time of 1:14:27. The race actually went very similarly to June's Lake Pflugerville Tri, except that the bike course there had less elevation change and the run was slightly shorter, so I did it in almost a minute quicker than today's race.

I did a short ride/run Saturday, and found I had at least two mechanical issues with my bike. Fortunately, when I went to get my race packet later in the morning, the triathlon shop was able to get it quickly adjusted, and I had no problems during the race.

The swim went pretty well. I wound up with almost the identical time to Pflugerville, probably because in both cases I went pretty wide around the course and wound up doing more than the designated 500 meters. The only minor issue I had was due to a new tri top I was wearing for the first time. It turned out to either be larger or stretchier than the other ones I've used, so it pulled away from my skin and allowed water in (also air later on the bike). I can't be sure that it caused more drag, but it was an odd feeling. I guess I should have tried it out more than 20 minutes before the start of the race. Still, about a minute and a half of my time gain from last year was in the swim

I was passed by a few bikes out on the course (including my former swim coach David who also blew past me in Corpus a while back), but other than the one guy I went back and forth with a few times, I was passing bikes the whole way. Although it was roughly the same distance as Pflugerville, there was more climbing. Nothing really steep or long, but enough that my power output was a fair bit higher, while averaging 1mph slower for 21.7. My bike split time was almost 30 seconds quicker than last year's.

Coming out of T2, a lot of people were cheering "Go Mikey." For half a second, I thought they were cheering for me, before I realized that popular local triathlete Mike Thompson was right behind me.

The run went fairly well. I felt like maybe I was pushing the pace too hard, largely because there were quite a few other runners going at least as fast. So, I was trying to chase/keep up with them, but still felt like I wasn't going fast enough. In reality, I was going nearly as fast as I ever have for a 3-mile run. My mile splits were 7:11, 7:35, 7:40. I would have liked to go even faster for the finish, but I started getting a bit of a cramp and couldn't push any harder. The last ~20 meters were sand, so it was hard to get a real sprint to the line. Then I finished right behind someone else, so I probably didn't even get a good finish line photo. My run split was about 45 seconds quicker than last year. The rest of the time improvement was in the transitions.

I loaded up on sugar, and then pretty much as soon as I could get my bike out of transition, I loaded up my car and drove home, where I proceeded to watch Olympics for the rest of the day.