Chicago
The Chicago Triathlon was last weekend. I hadn’t been to Chicago since I was very young so I was excited to go back (normally the Chicago airport is just a layover en route to another destination so it was odd to actually leave the airport in a car). Also exciting was my new TT bike (a brand new Orbea Ordu). Thanks to Matt Moss at Florida Bicycle Sports for helping me get this bike and fitting me to a great aero-position. Until Chicago I had never raced on a real TT bike before – I always just changed my trusty road bike into a TT bike with some clip on bars. So, the question is: Does a TT bike make a difference? I’ll get to that a bit later.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I was supposed to go home to Florida last week to get some sweet racing wheels so my bike would look a little bit like this:
However, because of tropical storm Fay I stayed in Colorado all last week and went straight to Chicago on the Friday before the race. I spent most of Saturday trying to find a set of race wheels and a way to carry more water on my bike. Thanks to my friend Aaron Kamnetz for letting me use his race wheels!
Anyways, on to the race: I had an awesome swim, exiting the water in the front pack about 10 seconds back. I bumbled around a bit in T1 and lost about 15 seconds to a group containing Andy Potts, Brent McMahon, Steven Hackett going into the bike. Generally this means I will never see these athletes ever again as my strategy on the bike is usually to just limit my losses. However, I completely surprised myself when I actually caught back up to those guys. I caught the group about 10K in.
At this point I was very excited about how my race was going. So excited that when I took a drink out of my water bottle I dropped it and found myself with not nearly enough liquids to adequately fuel myself for the rest of the race. I rode the rest of the bike with only what was in my aero-drink bottle that I had purchased at the race expo the day before.
Onto the run: I ran the first 4 miles pretty conservatively. I was safely in the top 10 and guaranteed a decent paycheck – I didn’t want to be the guy who collapsed 100 meters from the finish. However, when I tried to ramp it up in the last 2 miles, nothing happened. I wasn’t hurting but my legs refused to go any faster. I think this was from training at altitude for the previous 6 weeks. I had no concept of leg speed but tons of cardio fitness. I crossed the line in 8th place.
Overall this race changed my perspective on non-draft races. It’s nice to know I can stay in the game on the bike and not just wait for the run. And yes, a TT bike does make a difference – just make sure to get fit to the bike by somebody who knows what they’re doing!
The Chicago skyline.
Stuck in Colorado
I was going to fly back to Florida this week but not anymore (not that I’m complaining!). The only problem is that I’m racing the Chicago Triathlon this weekend and I was going home to get race wheels!
Tropical Storm Fay
So, in the mean time the Olympic Training Center was nice enough to give me a room for an extra week. Also, I got to watch both the men’s and women’s Olympic triathlons which ended up being aired on a 24 hour delay. Had I flown out on my original flight I wouldn’t have been so lucky.
Emma Snowsill won the women’s gold.
Jan Frodeno was the surprise winner of the men’s race.
Jan Frodeno was definitely a big surprise in the men’s race. It’s especially amazing since he doesn’t come from any particular sports background other than a late start to swimming and then lifeguarding competitions prior to his entry into the sport of triathlon (according to www.jan-frodeno.com). It’s downright encouraging!
While I was in Hamburg this year I was walking around with Ethan and Steve after the race and we saw Jan racing around the Hamburg bike course on a women’s cruiser bike. We couldn’t figure out what he was up to but we found this on Youtube later that night:
Olympic Triathlon!
Oh man, I’m excited. The women’s Olympic triathlon starts in 6 hours! That’s 10 AM local time in Beijing (it’s already tomorrow there), or 10 PM Eastern Standard Time (tonight!), and 8 PM here in Colorado Springs. The men’s race starts 24 hours after the women’s race. Here is the info on US TV coverage:
OTC Sasquatch Sighting
There have reports recently of Sasquatch sightings here at the Olympic Training Center. We finally have some video evidence. Rumor has it that Sasquatch likes to come out around noon near the athlete center. You really have to be careful around here these days:
Junior Nats
In what was probably the most exciting thing to happen here in Colorado Springs since my arrival about a month ago, the Junior and Youth National Triathlon Championships took place yesterday over in Prospect Lake Park (a quick 15 minute walk from the training center). “Junior” in triathlon is defined as athletes aged 16-19 and “youth” is 13-15. I took some sweet pics. Check ‘em out! Click here to read about the race:
Junior and Youth National Champs Article
In the junior women’s race, Lauren Goldstein-Kral led the majority of the race after leading out the swim and riding the entire 20K bike by herself.
Kate Ross took the lead about 2K into the 5K run and went on to win.
Kate, about to win.
In the junior men’s race, Ben Kanute led the swim, rode away from everyone on the bike and cruised to a victory.
Ben Steavenson, my roommate at last year’s Hamburg World Champs, took second with the fastest run of the day.
Shayne Murphy and Nicolas Tautiva. Go USAT Florida!
