blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

I hope many of you are waiting with great anticipating for my triathlon report!
Well, here he is:
The weather forecast wasn’t great and so was the actual weather. It was already raining when I got up at 5am in the morning. But, since I knew from military that I’m pretty much water proof and that is all in your head it didn’t bother me much. Not so many other athletes, “only” 5000 from about 7000 bothered to show up
After my morning routine and a long wait for the shuttle bus I arrived at the transition area. Within a few minutes I was soaked and shivering because of the cold temperatures. So the first thing I did was putting on my wetsuit which made the early rainy morning hours much nicer. The transition area was on natural ground and wasn’t ready to swallow all the water so I was super happy to have a plastic box for my gear. Since my neighbors bathing towel was underneath the water surface.

For whatever reasons the organizers delayed the start by 25min. At the same time they also promised sunny and warm weather which should arrive shortly. Guess what! That didn’t happen =)
The next big challenge for me was finding a restroom… even though they had massive amounts of “Porta Potty” I had to wait 20min till I was able to re leave myself. This was exactly 3min before I had to line up. Amy who hasn’t seem me for the last hour was already nervous where I would be and if I would make it on time. But I did. Since I consider myself not a strong swimmer I decided to start from the back of the 12th wave and try my best at drafting. I figured at the end it would be less hectic and I could focus on my swimming. Well I was proven wrong. The water was very crowded, since there was a wave every 4 min. There were swimmer everywhere; it was almost a fight zone. Giving and receiving hands/arms/elbows was a common thing for the whole 1500m. Somehow I manage to come through the water without a knockout and a satisfying time of 28min 46sec. The run to the transition area was rather long and is always an interesting experience in a dizzy state after the swim. I managed to find my bike and make may way to the exit. There was Amy who screamed some encouraging words and off I went.
The bike ride went really smooth. It is a flat course with only a few turns which was good for the rainy weather. Here again, I noticed that I was in wave 12 I had to overtake many people and was screaming “passing” all the time. Apparently it is really hard for bike riders to follow the right side of the road. To my surprise, I also saw many mountain bikes with suspension on the course. After only 1:04:53 I was back where I started.
After a stabling my bike and putting my running gear on. I was on my favorite part of the race. Amy once more had some encouraging words for me.

I run past the Washington Monument and was enjoying the scenery. That is also the reason I missed the first mile marker. The only indication of how fast I was going was the amount of people I was passing on the run. They even cheered me on with things like “Wow, you’re fast” or “Keep it strong”. I passed mile 2 with 13min, so I knew that I wasn’t slacking of too much. But since most people were running considerable slower, I had a hard time to keep my pace. Until at mile 4 another guy passed me. This was a blessing… I had finally something to focus on. I only lost about 100m on him on the next 2 miles. Which resulted in a run split of 39:01.

Thanks to jetBlue I received a print out of my race splits a few minutes after I passed the finish line. What an awesome service! It even included my correct division place (I was in the last wave of my age group).

Here you can see an animation of the race. Its easy to observe how much catch up I did in the bike and run leg

Other facts about this weekend:
600 miles (965km) car ride
12h of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (BBC Audio book)

EDIT:
Some pictures and videos from the race photographer: asiorders

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 3:03 am and is filed under Sport, Inspiring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.