9/18 - Buzzard's Bay

Buzzard’s Bay Sprint

Dartmouth, MA, 9/18/2011

.6mi swim, 15mi bike, 5k run

In the week leading up to Buzzard’s Bay, the summer weather turned miraculously cool, portending an ideal-conditions race to come. MIT brought quite a few athletes, since the course was only about a 1.5 hour drive from campus and we didn’t have many registered for the NECTC race of the weekend. Due to the necessity of avoiding low tide for the swim, the start was a luxurious 10:30am (although that would not have seemed so wonderful if the weather was hot like usual), so we didn’t need to leave until 7:30 – oh, the joys of “sleeping in” on a race day! My non-triathlete friends think I’m crazy…

Swim: 10:59, ~600yd, 230/505 overall

This was an ocean swim, point-to-point, and the water was quite wavy due to relatively strong winds. It made for a bit of a learning curve, since I haven’t swum much in waves and took a little while to figure out NOT to breathe on the right side or else I’d swallow water. On the plus side, I sure wasn’t lacking for electrolytes the rest of the race…

Water was 67 degrees, and I used the long-sleeve wetsuit, which felt a bit unnatural since I haven’t used it for so long but ultimately nice and warm and reasonably fast. Came out of the water in a reasonably fine position, not sure exactly where in my wave but apparently toward the front, since I didn’t see many women on the bike. The swim times ranged from about 8:30-15min, so it didn’t make much of a difference for anyone, although a couple of our team members were quite fast swimmers!

T1: 1:27

Pretty fast T1 for me – for once I didn’t feel tired enough to sit down or anything, and I just got new cycling shoes which are pretty fast to put on.

Bike: 43:30, 15mi, 20.8mph avg, 5^th woman, 78/505 overall

The bike course was fast and flat. The headwind was pretty strong at times, but I felt awesome flying by with my new aerohelmet. My new cleat was a little bit loose, which worried me some, but it didn’t significantly impact my ride or fall off (thank goodness), and upon finishing the bike I was the 3^rd woman overall J

T2: :54

Run: 22:52, 5k, 7:22/mile avg, 127/505 overall

This run turned out well for me, for once! I felt strong at the beginning, maybe because after just a sprint distance I was well warmed-up but not totally exhausted. The temperature was nice and cool (low 60s and cloudy), and I have been adding a good bit more intensity and speed/cadence work to my runs for the past 2 weeks. (side note: shin is hurting in a kind of weird way today, so maybe I should scale back on the intensity this week – would be unfortunate to get a stress fracture mid-season!)

Anyway, I came through mile 1 at 7:30, then soon saw our men (who started 5min ahead of us) coming back the other way, which was cool. Mile 2 was at 16:10, which seemed odd because I didn’t think I slowed down that much (8:40 mile 2?), so I suspect that maybe the mile marker was in the wrong spot. In any case, 2 women in my age group passed me in the final mile, which was very sad, except that I still came in to the finish in 22:52, meaning the final mile+.1 was at 6:32, which is ridiculously fast for me (and another reason to think that mile marker 2 was off).

So, solid run, certainly didn’t lose more than a minute or two off of most people, other than the girl who won our age group, who ran a lightning-fast 19:02. The other woman who passed me at the end was Ari from our team, which was awesome! Unusually, the F20-24 age group was the most competitive F age group to place in (i.e. 3^rd F2024 would be 1^st or 2^nd in any other age group)

Overall: 3/13 in F2024, 6/204 Women overall, 90/505 overall, 1:19:31

Overall, the race turned out very well! I felt strong despite what I thought might be a bad “taper” (Mon-Wed hard/long, Thursday off, Friday 8-mile easy-ish run, Saturday 20 mile bike and short OWS)

We dominated the male and female 20-24 podiums (2^nd and 3^rd place in each), and had several other very strong performances. In addition, some new members of the club completed their first triathlon! Hope we can keep up this great momentum for the final 2 weeks of racing!