This is my first attempt at writing a detailed triathlon race report. Hope you enjoy the report.
5 Athletes from the Cayman Islands entered for the Augusta 70.3 race that took place in Augusta, Georgia on the 26th of September. Myself, Bill, Celine and Ray all flew up to Tampa, Florida on the Thursday afternoon before the race while Justine took the less exhausting travel option of flying directly up to Charlotte, Carolina and then on to Augusta.
We stayed over in Tampa on Thursday night and headed out on the road trip up to Augusta on Friday morning at about 8am. Myself and Ray rented a Dodge minivan while Celine, Bill and Jon (Bill's friend from St. Pete Florida) drove up in Jon's car. For those of you that don't know, Augusta is about an 8 hour drive from Tampa. The drive on Friday took us about 10 hours in total with all the stops for brunch and late lunch included.
We eventually arrived safely in Augusta late Friday afternoon, think it was about 6pm. I specifically asked the hotel staff when I made the reservation that I would not like to stay on the side of the hotel where McDonald's was situated (Read complaints about this on Trip advisor). Guess what, when I checked on Friday they gave me the room closest to McDonald's. The last thing I wanted was to wake up at 2am on Friday morning from people making a noise after returning from a night out at the clubs. To make a long story short, I managed to change rooms and was fortunate to get a room on the quieter side of the hotel.
Before heading out for supper I decided to change the tyres on my race wheels. I always put on brand new tyres for a race. Having never used CO2 cartridges before I decided to experiment with the cartridges and used 1 cartridge to pump up both my wheels. After I felt comfortable inflating the tyres I deflated them again and pump up my tyres with the hand pump (Thanks Jasper, this was good advice).
After sorting out my race wheels on Friday evening Ray and I were pretty hungry so we headed over to T-bonz (Yes, the restaurant name is spelt correctly) where they offered a $10 "Ironman - all you can eat" pasta deal. The pasta was pretty bland but did the job of loading up with some carbohydrates.
I managed to sleep pretty well on Friday night after not sleeping too well the night before. Saturday morning first thing I spent about an hour assembling my bike and was glad that my bike did not get damaged during the Tampa flight. Ray and I both had a 25min bike followed by 15min run brick on the menu but could not cycle on the roads close to the hotel as there were way too many cars. We decided to drive to the start of thee bike course and navigated our way out to about 20 miles into the bike course to a town called Jackson, South Carolina. Never thought I would do a brick session there but it was pretty cool little town as we stood out completely from the local residents with our tri-suits on.
The bike course took place predominantly on the roads of South Carolina which was very scenic. A video of the bike course is available here as well as some race footage: http://www.wfxg.com/global/category.asp?c=195223
After Ray and I were done with our brick session and driving the rest of the bike course we inevitably ended up at the transition zone. We got out of the car and saw a couple of swimmers doing short swims in the Savanna river. I saw two triathletes standing at the exit of the swim course and asked them what they thought of the current after their warm up swim. Well after I asked them the question it only took me a couple of seconds to realize that it was two of the pro triathletes namely Philip Graves from the UK and Desiree Ficker. Think they might have something on as I saw them together most of the weekend.
Ray and I decided to rather do our 15min swim at the start of the swim course so we drove 1.2 miles south. The Augusta swim is not in the usual triangle format which meant that the swim start and finish was 1.2 miles apart which explains the ridiculously fast swim times because of swimming downstream in the Savanna river.
Platform for the official swim start.Reading the athletes guide the race organisers made it clear that they do not accept responsibility for swimmers wanting to swim the day before as there were no lifeguards and the could not guarantee that "underwater marine life" was not present. We were all thus a bit conscious of possible alligators in the waters but none of us saw any. The water temperature was 74 degrees fahrenheit (23 celcius) on race morning which meant that the swim was wetsuit legal. Combine a downstream river swim with wetsuit and you get pro's doing sub 20min for a 1.2 mile swim.
Before this blog gets too long I will shorten the events of the afternoon and the evening before race day. After our 15min swim Ray and I headed over to the race registration. Bad idea, the line was ridiculously long at about 1pm. We decided to rather get something to eat and guess what, had some more pasta. I decided to have no meat the day before race day and this seems to have paid off on race day as I had no stomach issues which has been the case in the past.
After lunch we headed back to registration but the line was still ridiculously long. We decided to attend the race briefing instead which was pretty informative. Guess what, after race briefing, registration line still long so we headed back to the hotel to chill out for a bit and get our bikes. After getting back to the hotel I decided to check my bike gears once more as two of the gears were not shifting properly when I did my 25min bike ride earlier in the morning. I felt a bit cautious of messing with the gears with only about 3 hours left of bike check in. I end up adjusting the rear derailleur slightly and manage to get the gears to shift perfectly. By this time it was about 4pm so we headed back to race registration and it took us a painful 1 hour and 15 minutes to register. After registration we headed over to the transition zone to check in our bikes which luckily only took about 2 minutes as most of the people had checked in their bikes.
After bike check-in Ray and I decided to get some supper. Wanted to eat by 6:30pm. The first Italian restaurant we tried was ridiculously full, luckily we got a spot at the 2nd restaurant we went to and had some more pasta (No meat).
I end up heading to bed at about 10pm on the Saturday evening but struggled to sleep. I kept on waking up and slept for maybe an hour at a time before waking up again. I was not too worried as usually it is the Friday night's sleep that is most important if one is racing on the Sunday.
Race morning, the alarm went off at 4:05am. Jana specially set her alarm in Cayman at about 3:20am to wake up so that she could call me to wish me the best for the race which was really special to me. Jana could not come along on the trip so she was tracking me online on race day from Cayman.
Ray and I left the hotel at 4:45am and parked the car at about 5:10am at the Marriott hotel as this is where we got the shuttle from to transition. I only spent about 5 minutes in transition to get my stuff ready where as Ray spent about 15min. I could see that Ray was worried about something, Ray end up leaving his Garmin forerunner at the hotel. Long story short, Ray managed to catch a cab back to the hotel and was back with time to spare before his wave went off.
I end up catching the bus back to the car and chilled at the car for a bit. At about 6:30am I started walking over to the swim start area (Only about 600m away). After walking around for about 3 minutes at the swim start area looking totally lost I heard Justine calling my name. It was nice to see a familiar face so chatted to Justine for a couple of minutes before walking over to my age group area to get ready for the start of the race.
I was really lucky, I started in the 4th wave of the morning (Started at 7:42am). Only the men and women pro's as well as the challenged athletes started before my wave. I felt confident going into the swim as I have done a significant amount of open water swimming in Cayman this year. As mentioned earlier, when looking at the results the swim times are so fast due to a downstream river swim and we were allowed to wear wetsuits. I started to the left of the platform (closer to the middle of the river as opposed to starting closer to the embankment/shoreline)
The siren went off and boom, my race had started. I started off being in the front bunch of the swimmers and just started catching more and more guys. The swim felt fairly effortless for me and felt like I could push harder but held back as I did not want to go anaerobic so early in the race. The swim felt really long so doubt it that the swim course was short, was more the current that carried us.
My swim results: (Half IM new swim split PB - does not really count due to the strong current)
Swim time for downstream 1.2 mile swim - 22:14
Age group position M30 -34 5th / 278 Seeding index 1.8%
Overall swim position 49 / 2536 Seeding index 1.9%
The bike portion of the race: (Garmin file for my bike split data http://connect.garmin.com/activity/50951200)
I got out of the swim feeling good, entered transition and got my bike. By this time it was raining pretty hard and the roads were wet. I decided to hold back slightly during the first half of the bike course due to most of the rolling hills being in the first 37 miles of the race. Of the 3 disciplines I was a bit disappointed with my bike time. I thought I would feel stronger on the bike as I put in a lot of focused long rides over the last couple of months but my legs were feeling pretty tired at stages. Looking at my Garmin data afterwards I can see that I put in a solid effort as my average heart rate was 157bpm which was close to my average heart rate of 165bpm during a 30km time all out time trial earlier in the year when I did the Reefathlon and averaged 40km/h.
I must say, I was disgusted with about 20 of the guys coming past me in my age group. They were clearly violating the "drafting rules" and justarly violating the "drafting rules" and just did not seem to care at all that they were working together and taking turns in front. Anyway, that is their business and for their conscience to deal with.
It rained a fair amount during the bike leg of the race which made the downhills and sharp corners pretty risky. After falling off my bike two years ago and sliding about 20m across the road at 35km/h during a rainy day here in Cayman I have been very cautious when the roads are wet. I was not taking any risks and guess I lost about two minutes just taking it slower on the downhills and corners
My bike results: (Half IM new bike split PB)
56 miles / 90km bike time 2:33:40
Age group position 58 / 279 Seeding index 20.86%
Overall bike position 350 / 2536 Seeding index 13.80%
Run leg ( Garmin data http://connect.garmin.com/activity/50951205)
After about mile 50 of the bike leg there were some downhills which was good for some easy spinning to get the legs ready for the half marathon. I really tried to focus on my running the last couple of months and it took a number of early morning wednesday long runs and tuesday speed sessions to improve.
I felt great getting off the bike and during the first 10km of the run. My run split after 10km was 48:13 which is pretty fast for me not coming from a running background. I started getting pretty tired after the 11th km which is evident in my run splits from there onwards. Overall I was really happy with my run split of 1:46. Thinking about it afterwards I definitely think I could have pushed it slighly harder and possibly have done 1:44 on the run. Well guess there will always be a next race I can try and improve on.
The crowd support was great as a fair number of people came out to watch the race. Even though I did not have anyone supporting me on the side of the road I knew friends and family were tracking me online which enabled me to remain focused and try and do as well as I could.
My run results:
13.1 mile /21.1 run time 1:46:34 (Half IM new run pb)
Age group position 77 / 278 Seeding index 27.7%
Overall run position 428 / 2536 Seeding index 16.9%
Overall results:
Overall time: 4:49:01 (New PB)
Overall age group position: 54 / 278 Seeding index 19.42%
Overall position: 260 / 2536 Seeding index 10.25%
Overall I am really happy with my race time and overall result. I achieved new personal bests in each 3 of the disciplines which is encouraging and a good enough reason for me to carry doing triathlon as I don't feel that I have reached a plateau yet and still incredibly passionate about the sport. I still have a good 10 -12 years ahead of me before I think my times will start slowing down and will thus be focusing on the Cayman Turtle triathlon next and then Ironman Switzerland next year July.
I totally under estimated as to how competitive my age group was going to be. This is my first year in the M30 -34 age group and will be working at moving up in the seeding index over the next couple of years.
I will also not be doing another half IM or full IM where non-swimmers benefit so much from current and being able to use wetsuits as it is during the swim leg where I usually make up most time. Even though I placed well in the swim leg I only gained about 2-3 minutes on most competitors whereas I would usually gain about 6 - 8 minutes.
After the race all the Cayman athletes got together at Outback steakhouse and enjoyed some great steaks. I must say, the 16 ounch prime rib went down well after such a long day.
Over and out, looking at the blog now I am thinking it is way too long. Until next time.
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