Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Day 97 : 28th August 2011 Tri-Factor Triathlon

Not preparing for the race a day ahead of the race can have dire consequences...

Waking up at 5:30am, I thought I have lots of time to prep for the race.
That is till I have almost finish prepping and open the Race Booklet to get a shock...

7:45am Start Time!!!

Out of the house at 7:00am, there is a distinct possibility that I am going to DNS the race.

Driving there, I start calculating the time.
Haha... this seems like Transition Zero for me. Home to Race Site is the fifth discipline. =p

Reaching the race site at 7:43am, I have 2 minutes to set up my transition area, body marked and flanked to the Swim Start.

Interestingly, the Race Director did not give the all clear till 7:50am. =p

I din missed my own wave. ;)

Into the water, I felt good.
The swim group is small, thus the swim is enjoyable.
Turning left on the first buoy, things were looking good.
Still have clear vision through the goggles and I can sight the second yellow buoy.
After swimming for a period of time, I realised that we are swimming against the current...
Again!!!

Swimming in a triangular format, we hit the shallow beach front pretty early.
Ahh... This feels like Tribob Triathlon again...
Moses walking on water...

Two items that Tri-Factor, Tribob can learn from OSIM is to have

1) A later Race Start for a higher tide.
2) A L-format swim route so that Moses won't have a chance to walk on water.

Into T1, most if not all the bikes from my wave has already left.
Tried my best to do a good T1 but failed.
Conrad came into T1 later than me but left T1 earlier.

Onto the bike, I felt good.
Two loops later, I could not say the same thing as riders started to overtake me easily.
Serves me right for not training hard enough...
Demoralised, I tried to keep my spirits high.
It is not really possible when rider after rider keep overtaking you.
By the 4th lap, I am getting bored.

Reminder to myself : Never sign up for a race where there are more than 4 loops.

Took a gel as per training. Dropped the entire sachet of salt pills which got pulverized within seconds by other riders. =D
Reaching the end of the fourth lap, I took a look at the watch and get very confused.
Watch reads 32km...
How can that be???

1 more lap will be 38km, 2 more laps will be 44km...

The lap issue killed a lot of brain cells during the 5th lap.
Decided to go with gut instinct and went with my gut instinct.

Turned out to be a good thing cos I finally figure out the reason... =d
The distance is showing the full race distance.
And being as inaccurate as it can be, the swim distance will usually clocked a longer distance.

Case closed. On with the race.

I am starting to get curious about my average bike speed.
I am pretty sure that I am doing 30kmh, but the other riders seems to be telling me another story.
Oh well, will have to find out the answer after analysing the race results.

Onto the run, I felt that the legs are "dead".
So much difference where you clock running mileage before a race versus no running mileage.
One of the worst race timing, if not the worst race timing for a 10km triathlon run...

This race serves as a grim reminder of what I will face if I dun train for the December Race.

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