Atten-hut! Race Report, Hooah!

2007 officially began in Parris Island on Saturday, March 17 with the Parris Island Sprint Triathlon from Setup Events.  The weather may have been cold, but the competition was certainly hot; and I am pretty proud to say that I was right in the thick of it from start to finish!  Race morning dawned clear, cold, and windy.  Air temps were anywhere from 40 to maybe 60 by the end of the event, with a gusty but constant wind that varied from 15-25 mph.  Parris Island is the premier Marine Corps training base in the country, and they certainly made it a pleasure to be racing on their home turf.

The pool was warm, at least in the mid-80s, which left several of us joking that somebody needed to find the switch to turn on the bubble jets!  500 meters went by pretty quickly, although not as quickly as I would have liked.  I only swam an 8:22, although I have been a minute faster than that in training.  I can really account for the extra time with the temperature and perhaps wearing my race top.  Nevertheless, it seemed to affect people pretty equally, as I posted the 36th fastest overall male swim time!

The bike was certainly what everybody said, flat and fast.  If you could get on this base and ride the course for fun, it would certainly be a place to see how fast you really can go on a bike.  The course wound over some of the lowcountry marshes, the rugged terrain unable to support even a tree, providing some wonderful views across the surrounding lowlands.  There was no real difficulty following the well marked course.  The wind was the only hindrance, although it was most often a crosswind and very rarely a direct headwind.  I certainly spent the entirety of this sprint race in my aero position, and usually leaning about 6 or 7 degrees to one side! 

Out on the run I really got to see how my training has been paying off!  Again, flat and fast, I left the transition strapping on my number belt and downing some Hammer Gel.  A few hundred meters concentrating on my stride, then I began focusing on backs.  I reeled in runner after runner, feeling that I had a good pace going.  Everything was going well until the last mile, when a muscle in my hip started to act up a little.  Nevertheless, it only momentarily slowed me down when it would twinge with pain.  I cruised, and I mean cruised, to a sub-seven minute pace, hanging on to my final position by less than 30 seconds.  I finished fouth in my age group, with less than four and a half minutes separating me from first, and the top seven competitors in our age group within about seven minutes of each other!  Had that been a mass start, that would have been a fun finish to see!

Well, six weeks until the Langley Pond Olympic Distance race!  I have two blocks of training, each two weeks on and one week rest, before the event.  Today I have already put  down more than two miles in the water, and have a second swim workout scheduled for later; wish me luck!

Oh, and I also promised over in the season 2 page that I would put up something to jazz the website up a little bit!  Here it is!

Lots of Changes

It is raining.  The day before the first race of the season it is raining.  It is supposed to be really cold tomorrow morning, like when I get out of the pool it will feel like it is about 40 degrees.  That may definitely warrant the addition of gloves and arm warmers to my transition gear. It is supposed to be clear tomorrow morning, with winds around 15 mph.  Yeah, this may put a damper on my planned time, but it should be even across everyone.  At least when I have a tailwind I will feel like I am really flying.  This may be a sprint where I really dig down onto my aerobars for the entire bike ride!  If all goes well I will be competing for a top three place in my age group, so I am pretty nervous right now.

I have made a lot of my last minute preparations for the race, and took some pictures to let everybody in.  I really am going to post more photos!

As you can see, I lost about six pounds of hair from my head.  It was really like shaving a mop.  You should have seen all the hair falling onto the floor.

This has got to be one of the pictures I can most laugh at myself in.  Another pound lost.

Isn’t it GREAT to be Alive!

Some days just go really well.  Sometimes you have a few of those days in a row!  I went down to Myrtle Beach on saturday to see a ‘Mouth concert, which was beyond even their usual awesomeness.  From the hilarity of big Fred LeBlanc opening with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to the absolute adorableness of the two little ones on stage at the end pounding on Fred’s new drum set for all they were worth (as Fred told them, “just go totally nuts on them, hit them like they’re your little brother, heck, set them on fire, I just got a new drum endorsement and these babies are free, so go to town!”).  I really wish I had brought my camera on saturday night, I know the pictures would not have been very good, but I have got to start taking a page out of my friend Gabe’s blog and post some more pictures.  She is still in China, by the way, and Gabe, if you can get this through the crazy internet censorship, we all miss you and are looking forward to your safe return!

So, that was great, Sunday was just busy as heck.  Slept in until almost noon!  Figured that was okay since I did not get to sleep until 3 am the night before, then did a whole bunch of stuff that had to be done but when I look back on it I wonder what really got accomplished.  Umm, replaced flourescent lightbulbs?  What a huge accomplishment.  Oh well.

Today was great.  Well, it was great from about noon on.  I finished up my ballistic assault on standardized exams.  I had a test Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and today (Monday).  Turns out I did pretty good on all of them; I think.  Then I really felt like I had just been set free from jail, I went straight to the gym and swam alot.  No shoulder issues at all, which is good.  I did a 500 set in 7:30 as a warmup, then swam some various distance sprints (50/100/200/100/50 meters) at about a 1:20/100 pace.  Then I followed that up by 50 meter stroke counts which all averaged around 45 seconds and about 28 strokes, repeat on every minute for ten minutes.  My pace is still good, but my stroke count is a bit higher than it used to be when I did stroke work.  I finished it all off with some 25 meter hypoxia sets, that is without taking a breath, where I really got to focus on my rythm without worrying about breathing patterns.  I ended up taking about 15 strokes per 25 meters, and about 18 seconds to cover the distance.  Translation would be 60 strokes and 1: 12 per hundred meters.  If I could only keep that stroke rythm while I breathe, I would be turning out a distance per stroke that is about that of Olympic Swimmer Larsen Jensen.  Of course, I don’t have nearly the cadence or speed (he averages about 59 seconds per hundred meters!) and my flip turns are sad mockeries of real swimmers which only end up costing me time (you will notice that in races I often do open turns if it is a pool swim).  Then I left the pool already thinking about biking.  I love the fact that whenever I finish a swim I automatically start thinking about cycling, whether it is about my next workout, my last workout, something technical, whatever.  I am such a tri-geek, swim finish = cycling. 

At some point I have got to get up to Greenville.  My mom just moved for her job, and I really need to make sure her computer and stuff is up and running, since this will probably be the best place for her to get some information about me.  I know that if I don’t post updates often enough I will get a call, “Cameron, it’s your mother, I haven’t seen anything on line for a while, just wanted to make sure you were okay.”  Yeah…….. so you can expect frequent updates.  By the way, mom, I have yet to burn my home down in the last six years, I probably won’t be doing it any time soon!  Russell, on the other hand….

Good Night All!  Be on the lookout for a season 2 update, the last one prior to event one!