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.