Triple T - Race #2

Race #2 at the Triple T is an Olympic distance race. Not a big deal for most long course triathletes. It's over before you know it.

Really....I mean..how bad can a .92 mile swim, 25 mile bike and 6.5 mile run be? I have training days longer than the duration of this race.

However, this race is approximately 12 hours after the super sprint. Sleep is very important for keeping it together with this weekend. It's precious....valuable...crucial. But for Friday night it was also going to be scarce.

After the Friday race we went back to the campground, ate, showered and went to bed. I was sleeping soundly when I heard a knock on the door around 9:30PM. I stayed in bed because I wasn't sure if I truly heard the knock. The knock hit the door again so I asked who was there. My neighbor was letting me know that the park ranger had told him about a potential tornado touchdown about 30 miles from the campground. Wow that woke me up.

I was up now. We could see the lightening to the north. I was outside when the ranger drove through again and I talked with him. While we were talking a weather alert came across his radio about a tornado warning until 10:30PM. We only had to wait it out for another 45 minutes.

Aimee and I finally fell back asleep only to be woke up by the sound of rain coming down around 11:30. It was coming down very hard. We were glad not to be tent camping like some of the other racers near us.

Come morning I was feeling good. The temperature was around 60 and I knew it would be warming up as the day progressed. After I prepped for the race we drove over to the race site. I heard several people mention hearing sirens overnight, a power outage at the lodge and the reports of not one but two tornadoes.

The pre-race meeting presented two changes to the morning race course. The bike course originally designed for the morning race was not going to be used due to three trees laying across the road at different areas. No way to clean up the mess in time. Unfortunately we wouldn't be riding the morning course which is much nicer than the afternoon bike course.

The morning course goes through the Shawnee State Forest and is very pretty, when you have time to look around between gasping for air. We also didn't have to climb Thompson Road hill which is a brutally short but steep climb. The afternoon bike route is an out and back along County Road 125. It has two major climbs with very fast descents.

The run course would also be slightly altered for the rest of the weekend due to the muddy section we ran through on Friday. We would have destroyed it by Sunday so we ran on the road around the grassy area. It really didn't add too much to our distances.

So two changes for the day/weekend. No problem. As a triathlete we should be prepared to go with the flow, accept changes gracefully and make the most of the situation.

As Yoda was telling me in transition...."In tri..Do or Do Not". How can I argue with a Jedi Master?


After Yoda and I set up my transition area, I put on my wetsuit and walked over to the beach. Actually we walked over to where the beach used to be. The rain had brought the level of the lake up several feet. Our beach start was now moving up to the grass above the water line. The water was also muddier than Friday night.

I posed with Ben, Linda and Mark for race #2 picture.



So we lined up to for the time trial start of the swim. We had to run a little bit further in the water this time but once I dove in it was all....COLD!!!! The rain had dropped the temperature of the lake by several degrees. My arms and face were freezing. It wasn't such a shock that I couldn't swim. I got into my groove and knew my arms and face would get used to the cold. I would also be generating some heat to keep warm.

I settled into a great rhythm of three single breaths on one side then switching to the other side. I could sight to the sides and was sighting in front of me quite well. I was tracking pretty good. I would move in and out of cold and warm spots but just kept moving forward.

Here is Linda coming out of the water. The beach is flooded up to the sidewalk. The second picture is from Friday night just to give you an idea of the water levels.





I finished the swim in 24:43 and through T1 in 1:36. The bike was good and I managed to bomb the downhills with little traffic. I pushed the effort harder than last year because I wanted to cut some time off my splits. I came into T2 at 1:15:53 and exited 35 seconds later. I wanted to rip up the run course.



I started conservative, at least I thought so, and hit the 2 mile marker at 15:54....8 min/mile. After that I took mile splits but didn't look at my watch.

3 = 7:59, half uphill and half downhill
4 = 7:50, another half/half with the hills, after mile 4 it's mainly downhill.
5 = 6:42
6 = 5:57
.5 = 3:38
Total run time 48 minutes.

Total race time 2:30:44. I took 9 minutes off my time from last year. I didn't mean to take that much time off the clock.

This is my attempt to indicate that race number two was complete. I was too tired to raise my arm up all the way. This one hurt a little.


I grabbed some food and cooled off in the now colder creek. We didn't stick around too long because we needed to get back to the camp site and relax before race number 3 which started at 3PM.

More fun to follow.