Saturday, March 14, 2009

Azalea Triathlon Report

1st race, 1st win. I was successful at defending my Azalea Triathlon title. Although not by much. I took the overall victory today by a mere 2 seconds, the smallest margin of victory in North Carolina Triathlon Series history according to NCTS historians. Tom Clifford, local run coach/tri freak/beer lover, had an awesome race coming in second behind me. His swim and bike have improved a great deal over the past year, and it clearly showed today. It would have been an interesting finale if it was a mass swim start.

The race itself was not all that pleasant. We started off the day with 41 degree air temps and overcast skies with rain likely in the forecast. Fortunately, we lucked out on the rain and only had to deal with the raw temperatures. Due to the cold temps, I decided to warm up on my rollers at my house before the race. I only live a mile or two from campus, so I was able to leave at the last minute and still have time to get everything set up with minimum outdoor time.

On to the race. The swim at Azalea is a 300 yard pool snake swim. Pretty dag gone short and annoying to boot. However, one thing I like about this swim is that I don't get much of a lead going into coming out of the water, which means I have to be spot on for the rest of the race if I want to win. It presents a unique challenge that forces me to focus on my weakness's early on in the season. So anyway, the swim was pretty much business as usual. I think I was about 3:06 at the wall and 3:30 at the pad out the door. Pretty average swim time compared to my past Azalea experiences.

Unfortunately, Set Up had some timing issues and I only have my swim split. Everyone else has their splits without transitions taken out. Figures I would be the only one with all but one split missing. Any who, what can extrapolate from my finishing time of 46:08 is that I was 13 seconds slower than last year, and probably split about the same as last year on the bike and run. So about 23 mph on the bike and maybe a 17 low on the run. Despite coming off a recent battle with plantar faciitis, I felt fantastic on the run. My run split may have even been under 17, but it's so hard to gauge on a course like Azalea which is riddled with 90 degree turns and a 180 degree turn-around that just zap your speed.

One interesting piece of data that I do have is my power readings from the bike leg. I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow our shops powertap wheel for today's race. I have not had a chance to upload it yet, but according to the computer I averaged 299 watts for the bike with an average speed of 23.4 mph. In terms of power, I feel like I had a great bike split. However, 23.4 mph is a little disappointing. My theory is that I was slowing down a lot more due to the damp conditions on the road, which brought my average speed down, but kept my power high due to the accelerations I was having to make. I just did some quick math, and determined that my watts per kilogram was 4.11. I think Lance used to be about 6.8 w/kg, so I guess I still have a ways to go until I win the tour. I'll post more power info once I download the data into the computer.

So another Azalea tri in the books. Maybe one of these years we will have nice weather again at this race. Next up on the calendar is St. Anthony's Triathlon down in St. Petersburg, Fl. This will be my first pro race of the season. The next few weeks are going to be full of some high intensity workouts to prepare myself.