The race is a little shorter than the Heart O' Dixie: .5 mile swim, followed by eighteen miles on the bicycle, and capped off with a four-mile run of which about half of which is on a trail.
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| The lower lake at Sardis. |
It's a neat race. The swim takes place in the lower lake at Sardis Reservoir. The "small" lake has everything one needs for a triathlon or a day of relaxing at the beach. Yes, it has several nice sand beaches surrounded by wooded areas dotted with picnic tables. Penny and I need to go back when I'm not racing.
The 8:00 a.m. start is nice too. The HOD begins at 6:30 in a effort to get ahead of the heat. That helps a little. By late August, however, if you are not heat acclimated, you should turn in you Man Card. Seriously, turn it in.
It has a staggered swim start like the HOD. I was way in the back of the line having registered only the Monday of race week. Once in the water, I felt my old familiar glee at passing swimmers. I get a charge out of that. I didn't count them this time, but it must have been thirty swimmers I smoked in the water. Lately, my yardage and intensity have dropped due to the training blues. During the swim, the long head of my triceps muscle along with my rear deltoids and the tie in of my latimus dorsi were in pretty intense pain. All the while, I was not sucking air nor did my chest burn or my heat rate feel high. Yes, sometimes I can tell. That, I took it, was because I had lost some fitness in my swimming muscles while gaining some cardio vascular efficiency due to my increased running.
One has to run uphill through deep, loose sane about 100 meters to the transition area and cross the timing mat before one's swim officially ends. On the way, I pulled my Garmin from the back of my swim cap and was shocked to see 15:00 minutes and change!!!!!!! Dude!!!!! Later, when the results were posted on the internet, I saw from comparing my times to the guys in my age group, several of whom I had raced before, that I was about the same number of minutes ahead of them as I usually am. Thus no panic. These swim courses, even at the same event, are not the same length from year to year. This year's half mile at the Dragon Fly was really a half mile. Or more. Some years it might be .45 which is what the race director told us it was one year at the Heart O' Dixie.
On the bicycle it was the same ole same ole: a steady stream of cyclists coming around me like I am stopped on the side of the road. This time I didn't even sweat it. I did, however, wonder how long it would take before I was the last one on the course.
The bike leg is an out-and-back, pancake flat except for one big hill. When I got to the bottom of that hill, I heard someone yell an expletive. Then I heard it again and again. I looked up in time to see a racer coming down the hill about thirty miles per hour with his front wheel wobbling like it was about to explode into a hundred pieces. "Dude," I thought, "you need to be praying not cussing." I waited for the sound of his crash. I was going to go back and view the body. When I heard no racket after a few seconds, I determined to keep pedaling.
On the hill, a seventy-year-old man passed me. It happened. Good for him. On top of the hill, I saw something that gave me a great charge. Up ahead was a fat man on a mountain bike. I was gaining on him rapidly. I hope he is not must somebody out exercising, I prayed. I passed him and checked him out as I went around. Yes, there was a race number on the frame of his oversized cycle. For the first time in years, I passed someone on a bicycle during a triathlon.
After the big hill, the route goes about another mile, then turns around and we go back the way we came to the transition area. On the return trip, I got another one. Up ahead was a tall, thin, muscular, athletic-looking young black woman who could probably dunk a basketball, outrun me at every distance from 50 yards to a marathon, beat me in a power lifting match, and choke me out in an MMA fight. But despite all that, she had obviously never been given fifteen seconds of instruction on riding a mulit-speed bicycle. She was pedaling at what looked like a forty RPM cadence. As I passed I yelled, "Drop a gear and spin faster." She most likely did not for she would have passed me back if she had. I've learned the hard way that most people will not take unsolicited advice from a stranger.
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| Coming in on the bicycle. |
The run started with the hope that I would reap the benefits of all the miles I have waddled through since the Heart O' Dixie. My running legs were slow in coming, but eventually I got down to a low 12:00. Unbelievable. The first mile split was 12:05, then the route goes off road onto a trail.
Immediately my pace took a hit. It got slower, then it slowed some more, and after that it tapered off, and eventually it got really slow. Trail running is hard. If you have never done it, you really don't know. Back when I used to wear a heart rate monitor, I remember that even getting onto grass around Greenwood, flat grass, my heart rate would instantly shoot up ten beats per minute. The footing is softer, changing the muscle contraction slightly. The path is up, the path is down, and the trail will caster and camber, and every single footfall is different. It's fun; I really enjoyed it, but it kicked my rear end pretty hard.
When I left the trail, the two mile spit I recorded on it took me a bit over thirty minutes. I was able to pick the pace up a little back on the one mile of flat asphalt that led to the finish, but still, it was a slow run.
Hey, I had fun. I got a good workout. I have another cool T-shirt and a nice finishers medal. But I am a little disappointed in my performance. Everything was slower, the swim, the bike, and the run. I'm thinking I might be a little overtrained, but what else is new? Penny enjoyed herself and I put some more work into the fitness bank. Maybe I can make some big withdrawals at the Oaks.
Thank you, Jesus for a good day.
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