Danskin race report, part I.

Why "part I," you ask?

Because it's now 2.5 hours after the website promised result postings and I still have no idea what my times were. No clocks onsite, no "unofficial results," nothing. :) So I'll get back to that when I've got the numbers for you.

Last year this race had some organizational problems which I expounded upon in this blog, but they promised to address them this year by changing the bike course so that parking wouldn't be an issue and people could "arrive and leave when you please." That's a nice ideal to shoot for. Let me tell you how it worked out in practice.

My friend's race heat was scheduled for 7:36, and mine was scheduled for 7:44 a.m.. We wished to arrive with more than the advised hour to spare, so we left Longmont about 5:10 a.m. for what is roughly an hour-long drive. We got to the highway exit for the race site at 6 a.m. The last two miles were backed up onto the highway, and we arrived at the race site in time to park at 6:55 a.m. This was, as you might imagine, not a satisfactorily relaxed beginning to the day.

Second came the shuttle buses, which were supposed to take "athletes only" to the race site 1.5 miles away. There were not enough of them, nor were they big enough. We caught a shuttle and got to the site roughly ten minutes before my friend's heat (thus 18 minutes before mine). Women were just freaking out everywhere about the lack of prep time, missing their waves, and so forth. Additional race waves had to be added as people continued to arrive, and a race that should have concluded roughly at 11:30 a.m. had its last heat start roughly an hour later than planned. It was in the high 90's today so unfortunately this made the race quite difficult for the later starters who were biking and running in the high 80's instead of the much cooler early morning temperatures. There's much to be said for aforethought and arriving early, but even the early birds were frustrated with the way arrival arrangements were botched. At least we made our wave starts, so we were better off than many.

Now come the good points: The water was lovely and refreshing, roughly 70 degrees, so brisk but very swimmable. The swim, bike, and run courses were well-staffed with volunteers who were very encouraging and cheerful. The course was well-marked throughout and the new bike route was hilly enough to be genuinely interesting and challenging. And the lack of time to hang around the transition area before the race start meant I had very little time to spend in the "what the heck am I doing!?!" nervous stage.

And how was my race? I don't know about my time goals because as I mentioned we're apparently not allowed to know our own times nine hours after the race...but overall, I accomplished at least some of the goals I set.

For the swim: I didn't quite make the whole swim without switching to backstroke, but I only switched twice, briefly for about ten strokes each side, to give myself a little breath instead of stopping after each major turn buoy. Mostly I stayed with freestyle, I was quite pleased with my sighting, and think I stayed much closer to the course this year rather than swimming side-to-side. I would get better at open water swimming if I just did more of it and plan to incorporate that into future seasons (and maybe even later this summer if possible).

I threw my bike chain at one point switching gears and lost about a minute fixing it, but otherwise had no major difficulties throughout the bike leg of the race. This was frustrating because I was definitely on pace to beat last year's time before the chain dropped; I'll be surprised if I come within a minute of it now. But hey, different and harder course, too. A few sharp turns and some long hills made me think about future training and preparation if they keep the same course in future years. Luckily I'd done some hill work on the trainer so didn't have to push too hard. But if I'm going to stick with triathlons, sooner or later I'm going to have to start putting in more total bike miles because, as one of my fellow tribloggers Bolder reminds his readers often, "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BIKE."

My run was better this year, since it was about an hour earlier and (I'm guessing) about ten degrees cooler than last year. This still meant a run in the mid-80's temperature-wise, on hard concrete paths with no shade anywhere in sight. And a bunch of women who'd quit running and were walking three and four across on the path, blocking the runners. Luckily since it was earlier in the day I had more fellow runners still jogging or running, so it was easier to make a path by far this year because so many women in front of me were cutting one. :) They really needed volunteers on this leg screaming "Walkers to the Right! Let the runners run!" or something. Tired women are not always cognizant of the needs of their fellow athletes. Still, I ran almost all of it except for one turn with too many walkers, so came very close to that goal as well. I doubt I was much quicker than last year but we'll see if they ever post the results.