This morning was the Cinco

This morning was the Cinco Ranch Triathlon, the goal race of the 10-week training program I’ve been doing all summer. It was an up-and-down race, but in the end I earned my first official piece of hardware! Read on for all the details…
I’ll start with the bad: my run was absolutely horrible. It turns out that any benefit I might have gotten from spending the past week in the thin air of 8,000-10,000 feet altitude were completely outweighed by the negative impact of not staying adjusted to heat and humidity. As if that weren’t enough, I started in the last group, so we got to deal with the most sun. I walked as much, or more, than I ran. I got a cramp in my side. I felt tingly. In short, I overheated! I struggled to a 35:58 time for the 3-mile run. That’s 11:59/mile. OUCH. The only silver lining is that since I wasn’t wearing a watch, I actually thought I might’ve done worse. I was thankful just to see that it was under 12:00/mile.
But on to the good: I had my best bike leg ever. I’ll chalk up part of it to my legal blood doping (the altitude thing), and another part to having finally cleaned my bike yesterday (so the chain and cog were finally degreased and re-lubed and shiny), and a final part to my training program. I covered the 12 miles in 39:34, or an average of 18.2 mph! I was very happy with my ride, and felt good the whole way. Sadly the training I’ve done doesn’t seem to have improved my running much, but it has definitely improved my biking.
The swimming also went well, despite the fact that the lake was downright nasty. Tons of grass and weeds (I think I may have been dragging an additional 10 pounds of lake plant crap through the water), and because I was in the last group to start, the water had gotten so churned up by that point that I couldn’t see a darn thing underwater. There was so much dirt floating around in there that while standing there before the start, with my hands under water, I couldn’t see them until I brought them to within an inch of the surface. I covered the 500 yards in 9:44, which is about what I expected. (Just under 2:00 per 100 yards is always a good estimate for me.) I probably could’ve finished closer to 9:00 but I was forced to do quite a bit of pulling up at various points due to people that couldn’t swim straight and were therefore either smacking my legs or kicking me in the head. It was one of the more violent swims I’ve done.
I expected to finish faster than the Tejas Tri in June (where I did 1:28:48) and even told someone yesterday that I hope for better than 1:20, but in retrospect I was obviously misestimating. The swim was 300 yards shorter than Tejas, but I’d forgotten that the bike was 1.5 miles longer — and those two almost cancel each other out; -5:45 for the shorter swim, but +5:00 for the longer bike, so I’m saving less than a minute. My bike was faster, but my transitions were much slower (explanation in a minute) and my run was about 2:30 slower. All that added up such that I finished 3 minutes slower than Tejas. The breakdown:
Swim (500 yards) – 9:44
Transition 1 – 3:40
Bike (12 miles) – 39:34
Transition 2 – 2:52
Run (3 miles) – 35:58
Total Time – 1:31:46
And now the best part: I earned my first official piece of race hardware! Like in June, I chose to forego my age group and entered the “Annie Oakley” category, for women who weigh more than 150 pounds, and lo and behold, I finished 3rd in that category! 3rd out of 17! I got a cool plaque and the satisfaction of a legitimate hardware result. Cooler still is that after checking the results, I see that I beat one of the girls who finished ahead of me in June (where I was 5th in the weight category). I’m still bummed about my crappy run, but the two women ahead of me were there by more than 6 minutes, so a good run for me still wouldn’t have gotten me higher on the “podium.” But a worse run would have dropped me quickly — 4th and 5th place each finished within 1:30 of me.
This was my first time at this event (this was its 14th year) and while overall I think it was well-organized, I did have one fairly major complaint — the transition area. Here’s a quick graphic I drew to show you what I mean. Number 1 was racked right next to the bike in/out, while number 1000 was racked at the far end. My number was 866, so I had to rack my bike on the 5th rack from the end of the transition area.

Do you see the problem? People with low numbers come out of the water, enter transition, and pass their bike on the way to the bike out. People with high numbers (aka me) come out of the water, enter transitions, have to run all the way down to the far end, get their bike, and run all the way back to the other end before they can finally get on their bike and get going (you cannot mount your bike until you’re outside transition). And of course while with your bike, you’re running in clunky clicky bike shoes (i.e. not easy). When you return from the bike it’s the same thing — run the entire length of the transition area to re-rack your bike, then run halfway back to finally start the run course.
To the race’s credit, they do put each age group or weight category together, so that everyone in my category had the same disadvantage. Still, the result is that each of my transitions were a minute or more slower than they would’ve been had I had a low number. In June at Tejas, my transition times were 2:48 and 1:35, and that was before I had my tri shorts and quick laces and therefore was doing additional clothes-changing and shoe-tying. Today? 3:40 and 2:52. I think the impact is obvious.
The funniest part is that I think the issue could be quickly fixed by simply shifting the transition area down the street (it was in the middle of a completely blocked-off street) such that the swim in and run out gates are at the far end of the area. Then everyone has to run the length of transition exactly twice while getting their stuff for the next leg of the race. I may send the organizers an email suggesting just that. Not sure what their reasons are for the way it’s currently done.
But ANYWAY: a great bike, a horrible run, and my first real piece of race hardware. Not bad. Not bad at all.