Philadelphia Insurance Triathlon Race Report

Below is the breakdown of the Olympic distance race in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia.

The day started off with my earliest wake up call yet… 3:20am! I did not sleep very well the night before the race and I had a hard time getting my heart rate to calm down. All I could think about was the race. 

After getting up pretty easily out of my semi-asleep state, I had my regular breakfast of oatmeal and peanut butter, a bit of coffee and we hit the road.  We flew downtown from where we were staying about 20 minutes away and after getting a little lost, somehow managed to get to the race site parking. We got our things together, pumped the tires and rode our bikes down to the transition area. 

After getting organized and ready to go, Alex and I took the bus down to the swim start at St. Joe’s boathouse down the river. I hit up the port-o-potty and then the two of us went for our warm up.  We jogged along the river path for about 15:00 and I was able to add a few shorter pickups and felt very fluid.  After a light stretch, I put my Kiwami on and went down to the dock where we jumped in.

Water temperature was 81.3 degrees, which meant no wetsuit.  I was pretty happy with the call because I think that I actually benefit from a non-wetsuit swim. The course is a straight shot down the river (with the stream behind us) before a quick right turn to the swim exit.  The pro men went off at 6:30am, the women at 6:31 and I was off at 6:33.

Right from the start there was a pack of about 10 guys who went out front. I was on the back of that pack and swimming comfortably.  I was happy to make the front group, which had been a bit of a struggle the past few races. I hammered along for about 100m and then realized this group was easily 50 meters away from the line of bouys in the middle of the river.  I had two choices, either stay with this group and be what I thought was off course, or break off from this group and join 3 or 4 others who were swimming right along the bouy line. I quickly realized that swimming out of the way was not the best decision and broke off from this group to grab onto the other swimmers feet who were swimming along the correct line.  And this was….. the wrong move! I went over to those guys and then after a few strokes realized I was either swimming much faster than them or they were fading hard. All I could do was watch the group to the left gain distance on me as I stayed along the bouy line by myself.

I exited the swim in 20:19.  A pretty strong swim time alone but I had planned to go a lot faster and I believe that if I was part of that group, I could have gone faster. Either way, they gained about :50 seconds on me total. :50 seconds I would have liked to have but I had to just deal with the decision I had made.

T1 was pretty smooth without a wetsuit. I got out of the water, made my way to my bike and headed out on the course after running through the long transition area.

We had driven the bike course twice on Friday evening and I had a pretty good idea of what was ahead of me. It is two loops, each with four major climbs. There is 850 feet of climbing per lap for a total of 1700 feet. It was not as hilly as the Pat Griskus race last weekend but still very challenging with a number of technical turns and bombing descents. I got on the bike and rolled up to the first hill, less than a mile out of transition. I may have taken this one too hard from the start because I got over this first hill and was pretty shot. Maybe I didn’t give myself enough time for my heart rate to come down after the swim but I really did not feel right until mile 8 on the bike.  The following climbs were pretty much what I expected and I really worked to gain speed on the down hills. After mile 8, I was able to push the pace a little bit and put some good power down on the pedals. I put my head down, worked hard and pushed through the course. I started to feel it again around mile 20 but managed to come into T2 with a 1:03:13 bike time. Not blazing fast and not really what I had planned but still pretty solid for the course.

T2 went great, I dropped my bike off and hit the run course with no problems at all.

The run course is pretty simple and flat. There is an out and back to the right of the transition area, a .4 mile run on the grass behind the transition and then another out and back on the other side before coming into the finish. I started conservative as usual and missed the fist mile marker, missing my first mile split time.  I felt like I was pushing and told myself to just calm down a couple of times. My legs felt like they were rolling and I thought I was doing pretty well. The two mile came up and I checked my watch for the first time to see 13:00.  About 30 seconds slower than what is usually pretty conservative pace for me. From that point on I started to push harder.  I just put my head down and gritted the last 4 miles out.  I may have gone a little too hard on miles 3-4 because I was hurting pretty bad towards the end.  I was reeling in a few of the pro women but only caught a few Elite males. Right at the 6 mile mark, I saw an elite male up the road and tried to catch him.  I put in a surge and left it all out there. I missed him by :02 seconds in the end, coming in with a run time of 37:55.

My total finish time was 2:04:24.  I would have really liked to be somewhere around 2:00:00 for this race but the bike course was challenging and I made a wrong decision in the swim. I pushed hard from start to finish and was content with my result. I finished 9^th overall in the Elite Male division, keeping my top-ten streak alive. I was also 23^rd overall out of 1589 competitors. It was a solid day and I am traveling back to Illinois a happy racer.

I also want to give a huge shout out to Alex Libin who took 1st place in the Male Elite field.  He is one seriously fast dude and an awesome friend to be with throughout the whole east coast trip. 

Sorry for no pictures this time, no personal photographer for this one! You can check out the professional pictures (and even some videos from the finish and the swim exit) from Brightroom here http://www2.brightroom.com/98163/143

I would also like to point out that I am currently ranked 1^st in the nation in the 18-19 division on the USAT Rankings. You can see it for yourself at www.usatrankings.com.

A huge thanks to Coach Craig at Precision Multisport, Eleonore Rocks Triathlon Team and  CycleOps Power. Also thank you so much to my family who came out to watch me race. Love you guys!