I dragged myself out of bed at 5:00AM on Saturday morning to find that it must have rained continuously overnight. I hadn’t heard a thing! Arriving at the race site, I immediately noticed that the water level in the lake was significantly higher than the previous day which usually means the water’s going to be colder. I was right: the water temperature was down to the low 60’s and I was glad that I’d packed my Xterra Vendetta fullsuit. (Thank you, Sponsors!)
Race #2 is loosely speaking an Olympic distance event with a slightly over-distance run and, if anything, a slightly under-distance swim.
Late news was that the organizers had had to change the bike course as a result of the storm. Basically we were going to do the race #3 route for race #2 as well. The good news about this was that we were going to miss out on the 18% climb on the original route …. The bad news is that this route is just as hilly although it would give me an opportunity to learn the route.
They started chivvying us into line just before 7:30AM and, a few minutes later, Deb and I were off. The swim course was a two-lap job where you more or less had to exit the water at the end of the first lap as the water was only a couple of feet deep. Other than the water was a bit on the chilly side, it was fairly pleasant swim and I was pleased to swim consistently: I finished the first lap in 13:30 and the second in 13:27.
I jogged into transition and set off on the bike making a mental note to take it easy.
The bike course is as follows: the first mile is fairly flat and you then climb for the next two and half miles; fairly gently at first but, it gets steeper as you get to the top of the first hill. You then lose all of this height over the next mile and then you start climbing again … only this second hill is shorter and steeper: you climb about 260 feet in less than a mile. You then have a couple of relatively flat miles followed by a steep descent where you lose 500 feet in a mile and a quarter. It’s then about three and half miles to the turn, slightly uphill all the way.
All you really need to know about the way back is that it takes significantly longer to climb 500 feet in a mile and a quarter than it did to come down ….. by about a factor of five!
None the less, I was reasonably pleased with my bike ride: 44 minutes each way without trying too hard. It’s difficult to compare these hills to any in Michigan …. Maybe the hill at the end of the Big Fish triathlon is the nearest although it’s probably only half as long and half as steep. These are more like mini Tour De France type climbs and I was starting to wish that I’d brought my road bike rather than the P3.
The run route is out and back along Lamp Black Trail. Most years, the run is entirely cross country but, because of all the rain, this year the first half mile or so was on asphalt. Good news in that it kept our shoes cleaner and drier; bad news in that it stuck another couple of hundred yards on the run.
On the whole, I’d say that this run is comparable with that of the Ann Arbor Tri. It’s a mile and a half longer but, the really steep bits are much shorter and most of the downhills are steep enough to make you run faster but not so steep that it trashes your quads.
Once again, I didn’t push it and was pleased to finish the run in 54 minutes for a total time of 2:53:46.
Not too bad ….
