June 20, 2010

Chick-fil-a sprint triathlon race report

I competed in the Chick-fil-a sprint triathlon June 19th 2010. It was a 400 meter swim, a 12.6 mile bike, & a 3.2 mile run. This a an AWESOME race! I've never seen so many volunteers for a sprint! The run was a great course winding through a HUGE sports parks that went in-between soccer & baseball fields that had kids games going on. People were stopping the games to hoot & yell for us triathletes.

It was the flattest fastest bike course I've EVER competed on. I used my HED3/ disk wheel set. They had finishers medal for every finisher, & the best awards I've ever seen at a sprint for the top 3 in each division. The top male & female overall got free Chick-fil-a for a year. They had free Chick-fil-a meals for all the competitors post race. They had a DJ playing music, & a guy dressed as the Chick-fil-a cow playing with all the kids. They had a kids triathlon after the adults race. All the kids got finishers medals. The RD's name is Mark G., & I called him 4 times the 2 weeks before the race asking questions that would annoy most RD's. He seemed happy to answer any questions I had. I loved this race & am planning on making it an every year race for my triathlon schedule.

I could go on forever about the great things pertaining to this race. The only bad thing that happened was my fault. I had my wife register me. During the registration process they asked my wife what my swim time was, she put 2hrs down as my 400 meter swim time. It was a seeded swim start, meaning they start a swimmer in the pool every 15 seconds starting with the fastest swimmer 1st, the slowest swimmer last. I was the last person to start my swim. This was bad for my race for a multiple reasons.

1) The race was scheduled to start at 8am. I didn't start my swim until 9:15 am. I ate at 5am to make sure my food was fully digested & my fuel tanks were completely topped off for the 8am race start. By the time I started my swim I was very hungry & incredibly thirsty.

2) By 9:15 it was getting really hot. My biggest deficiency as an endurance athlete is my inability to tolerate the heat. The heat hits me hard & slows me down much more than most athletes. By the time I hit the last half of my run it was sweltering hot!

3) All the people I was swimming with were averaging a 12-20 minute swims, mine is normal approximately a 7:20, so while I was swimming it was like I was trying to traverse an obstacle field. I must of passed 15 people. I guarantee I lost 15-20 seconds on the swim, I didn't want to swim around those people as aggressively as I normally do because I knew these were new swimmers & triathletes. I didn't want them to leave having received any elbows or having been swam over or dunked- yes that is normally what I do.

All is all I still finished with a decent time. 1 hr 5 min 39 seconds, taking 2nd place in my division out of 25, & taking 10th place overall out 200. I now have 75.75 points in the South West Challenge Series & am in 1st place in the 35-39 AG.

I finished 23 seconds behind Wade, who I have looked up to as an endurance athlete for many years. Hopefully some day I can finish in front of him at a race. I can guarantee you, knowing him as long as I have, once I beat him he won't be a poor sport about it. He's an honorable sportsman who would be excited & congratulate me. I strive to be as wonderful of representative of the sport of triathlon as he has been.

After the race I took my family camping at Palo Duro canyon outside Amarillo TX. We were very excited about our camping expedition. It did turn out well. It was unseasonably hot. It got to 101 that day. The night was miserably hot too. We're going to try camping again the last week of July, but this time in the mountains where it will be nice & cool.

My next race is the Santa Fe triathlon July 2010.

1 comment:

Paul Allen Hunton said...

Cody, that's awesome, wish I could have stuck around and talked more after the race but I had to get to Albuquerque for a reunion. That's crazy about the swim time, I was already done racing when you jumped in the water! It was nice to meet you, and I look forward to seeing you at more races. Cheers!