Race Report - American TTT - Race 3

After a few hours of lounging around and relaxing we started the 2nd olympic race of the day. The format would be a little different: bike, THEN swim, then run. Cool.

[Bike: 1:45:36 / 14.2 mph]
It was a time trial start for the bike, a pair leaving every 3 seconds. If you were racing as a team of 2 you were allowed to draft off each other on the bike. Not that there would be many places where drafting would pay off. As soon as I started my bike ride I had a mechanical, I couldn't shift into the big chain ring. I pulled over, pulled out my all-in-one tool and pulled up some slack on the front derailleur cable. I tested it while off the bike and it worked, I got back on to start my ride and then it didn't. What the heck?! Off the bike again, loosened the allen bolt, pulled in more cable, etc. This time it worked and I was on my ride. I later realized that the cable housing came out of the grommet where it enters my downtube so the cable was splitting the housing every time I shifted.

OK, so I'm on the bike now, losing 5-8 minutes to that nonsense already. But believe, I could care less about my time this weekend. This bike route was MORE brutal than the morning ride!!! You did a long climb out of the state park, then a short downhill and then another climb. Then there was a very long decent to get to a section of mostly flat (but also partially windy) riding. The bike route was an out-n-back so all that descending meant 1 thing, get ready to climb your way back. That one long climb had to be a mile @ 8%. Then there were 3 annoying hills right before the same 2 mile descent into transition.

[Swim: 40:54 ]
Go get all sweaty and then try to put a wet suit on. Tell me how it goes. KK gave me 2 plastic bags which worked wonders to slide my feet through with no problem. I finally stuff myself into the suit and get down to the water where people start asking me if I know the back of wet suit is open. My wet suit zipper is a little busted and missing some teeth too. It was zippered up but the zipper was split wide open the length of my back. Some volunteers struggled to get the zipper back down so they could rethread it and zip it back up. That all took a couple minutes to complete and I was into the swim. The cool water actually felt quite nice through my wet suit. People complained/warned about severe cramping from sending hot muscles into cold water but I had no problems.

[Run: 1:21:32 / 12:26 pace]
Remember all those hills I walked in the morning race? Take all of those and add a few flat sections and that is what I walked in this one. I picked the wrong race to try and fake.

After the race you have to clear out the transition zone and take everything home for the night. After taking showers and cleaning up KK and I had a cigar before getting to sleep. I was wrecked and I fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow at about 10pm, race time 7am lurking on the other side of those nightmares.