2012 Lake Lenape Sprint Triathlon
Race Report
July 14th, 2012
Background
Location: Mays Landing,
New Jersey
Distance: 0.27-mile swim/10.4-mile
bike/3.3-mile run
2012 Triathlon Race
Number: 7
Career Triathlon Race
Number: 121
Conditions: Mild for July
in NJ. 75 at start and mid 80s at
finish. Cloudy and very little
wind. Water temp around 80 degrees. Great mid-summer conditions for a triathlon.
This was to be my 7th
time racing at Sean Clancy’s venerable South Jersey triathlon classic with the
Creature from the Black Lagoon as its mascot.
This race has been around for quite a while and I have found it to
always be surprisingly competitive. In
the 6 prior times that I have raced this race, I was only able to win my AG
once—this was way back in 2003 and was in-fact, my first ever AG victory in a
triathlon—in my 10th triathlon.
The swim is in a fairly
nice cedar lake and has been fairly variable in length from year-to-year. The bike is an out and back on some sketchy
roads near the transition area and then a lightly rolling NJ back road. It’s a very short bike leg, which I’ve
consistently measured around 10.4 miles in length and for some reason I’ve
always been very competitive on it. The
run is 3.3 miles in length (which I’ve never understood why) and winds through
a local neighborhood area and then has an out and back during the last mile
which is always critical from a tactical perspective.
My body seemed to be
returning to normalcy post-RAAM but I was in my second week of my Kona IM build
so I was on a 23+ hour training week with 276 miles on the bike and another 33
on the run. I was clearly racing in a
fatigued state.
There were 244 triathletes
racing this morning with 16 in my AG. I
felt there were just 4 serious contenders.
Frist, Tom Dillon was there and given his recent results, I knew that
while I might be close through T2 that there was no way I could run with him
and that the AG victory was all but assured to go to him. Also present was Mickey Syrop who I have
raced more than any other competitor through the years. I’ve won about 2 out of 3 of our races but
during 2009-2011 he was the stronger triathlete. This year we’ve raced twice and I’ve beaten
him both times but I attribute this to his ankle injury that he now seems fully
recovered from. The other thing I’ve
learned competing with Mick through the years is that he gets competitively
stronger as the year goes on as he races himself into higher levels of
fitness. I felt it could go either way
on this Saturday morning. Finally, there
was Jack Boyle, who won this AG last year and who I’ve also raced many times
through the years. I think I have almost
always beaten Jack but he has lost 30 pounds since I last saw him and indeed
looks like he could be a real challenge this morning.
Should be a good one!
The Swim
Us 50+ dinosaurs are in
the 5th wave. The swim is a
counter-clockwise box (my preferred direction) and is my custom I head to the
outside away from the buoy line. There I
find Tom, Mick and Jack! Well, we can at
least all keep an eye on each other.
Historically, Tom has been a better swimmer than I but in recent races
that gap has been narrowed (I actually outswam him in our last race
together). Mick and I are pretty even
with Mick out-swimming me more than the other way around. I usually outswim Jack—but that was the old
Jack.
At the start, I see to my
left that Jack has decided to swim about 45 degrees off-course. He’s coming straight for me but fortunately
he runs into Mickey and they play water wrestle for about 5 seconds or
slow. After this, Jack seems to decide
to swim the most direct route and calmness is restored. I see right away that both Jack and Mick are
stronger than I. I don’t seem to have it
this morning. I am wearing a sleeveless
wetsuit, which of-course is a bit slower, but I just don’t have a great feel
for the water either.
Typical Lenape swim. With 2 minutes between waves there are plenty
of slower swimmers to swim around and over.
I keep Mickey in sight for the whole swim but can’t match his pace. My goggle malfunctions and my left eyecup
fills with water—this is annoying but I try my best to ignore it. I hit
the beach with a swim split of 6:34.
This turns out to be my fastest swim spit of my 7 races here at
Lenape. I clock the swim at 0.27 miles
and I take 242 strokes to get around it.
This works out to 1.97 yards per stroke at a stroke rate of 37
strokes/min. Here is how that stacks up
against my other wetsuit/open water swims this year:
Race
Min/Mile Stroke/Min Yds/Stroke
Rumpass 23:27 37 2.02
Devilman 22:58 37 2.09
Hammonton 21:56 36 2.23
Tri-It 24:24 37 1.94
Lake Lenape 24:13 37 1.97
Looking at this data, I
come to the conclusion that my swim form has suffered a bit since I
transitioned from pool swimming to open water swimming (I did so between
Hammonton and Tri-It). This is not
surprising to me, as the lesser emphasis on repeats has probably affected my
efficiency. Also, post RAAM my swim
volume needs to be rebuilt. I think all
of this is very doable but on this morning, I was off just a bit. Had I achieved the swim stroked distance that
I had at Hammonton I would have been 46 seconds faster this morning.
Given this, it’s no
surprise that my relative swim competitiveness suffered this morning. I had the 26th fastest swim OA and
just the 4th fastest in my AG.
Here is how my relative percentile performance has fared through the
years:
Year Time OA Percentile AG Percentile
2002 9:25 72.0 79.3
2003 8:23 63.0 70.6
2004 8:22 80.0 80.9
2005 6:42 80.5 75.0
2006 9:00 84.7 83.3
2011 7:03 92.8 100.0
2012 6:34 89.8 81.3
The conclusion from all of
this is while I had a pretty good swim, it was off from what I should reasonably
expect to do. I’ll take this as an
invitation to work harder on my swim in the days ahead. Here is where we stood after the swim in my
AG:
1. Boyle --------
2. Dillon +
0:02
3. Syrop +
0:23
4. Christofferson + 0:30
5. Perlberg +
1:43
Transition One
I could see Mick up ahead
of me about 20 yards so I certainly had a feeling of needing to move it. As I ran through the “neutral flow”
transition, I looked up towards where I was racked—they do it alphabetically
here—and I could see Jack already putting his helmet on. Yikes!
I’ve had Mick in front of me after the swim plenty of times but I
certainly didn’t expect to see Jack there as well. In fact, Jack killed the swim and had the
best split in our AG. He and Tom went 8th
and 9th OA. I knew I was in
a bit of trouble at this point. My T1 was a disappointing 2:03—I’m not
sure why. I was 46th OA
(81.6%-tile) and 5th in my AG dropping time to all of my three major
competitors. Tom had the number 1
transition OA and put a whopping 36 seconds on me in T1 and he led us out onto
the bike:
1. Dillon --------
2. Boyle +
0:31
3. Syrop +
0:47
4. Christofferson + 1:04
5. Zacharias +
2:51
The Bike
Despite the less than
desired results through T1, I set out on the bike in good spirits and with the
intention of really hammering. I was
hopeful that my legs would be pretty good this morning despite RAAM and my IM
build. In this I received good news
straight away—I could tell that some of the jump had indeed returned to my
legs. I cranked out 281 watts over the
first mile and then I settled into a more sustainable output—mostly in the
250s. I didn’t have any dead spots like
at Vincentown. I still couldn’t crank it
to my full potential as you’ll see by the sub 160 heart rate (when my legs are
100% I tend to average around 165 bpm).
I caught Mick around 3
miles in and Jack shortly there after.
At the turnaround at 5.2-miles I could see that they were both not that
far behind me. Mick would later say that
he had his best bike ride in years. I
never saw Tom but I wasn’t looking for him.
Here are my numbers by mile:
1. 22.4 mph 281watts 159bpm 83rpm
2. 24.5 264 161 87
3. 24.5 242 157 85
4. 23.2 247 158 88
5. 24.8 253 158 88
6. 22.2 256 159 88
7. 24.2 252 158 90
8. 25.5 249 158 89
9. 25.3 247 158 88
10. 23.8 256 156 85
10+ 21.0 255 159 85
My bike split was 25:53, which works out to an average speed of 24.1
mph. This was actually only the 5th
fastest of my Lake Lenape bike splits but as you can see below 4 of these splits
are just 4 seconds apart:
2002 27:20
2003 26:22
2004 25:49
2005 25:11
2006 25:52
2011 25:49
2012 25:53
I averaged 255 watts,
which is 4 less than last year’s 259. My
HR averaged 158bpm, which compares to 161 last year and 165 in 2006—you can see
that my aerobic capacity has more potential than my legs delivered this
morning. I know I can go quite a bit
faster and I expect I will in August and September. Still, I’m not disappointed in this ride as I
did manage to turn in the fastest ride of both my AG and for the race
overall. Here is how my relative %-tile
performance on the bike has varied through the years:
Year OA
%-tile AG %-tile
2002
89.8 93.1
2003
98.6 100.0
2004
99.5 100.0
2005
99.5 100.0
2006
98.2 100.0
2011
98.8 100.0
2012
100.0 100.0
This is just the 4th
time that I have posted the fastest OA bike split. My other three races where I did this were at
Marlton 2005 (334 triathletes), Metroman 2007 (115), and SkipJack (81).
The race winner posted the
second fastest bike split and Tom actually posted the 3rd fastest
time OA—not bad for the old guys! Here
is where we stood after the bike:
1. Dillon --------
2. Christofferson + 0:56
3. Syrop +
1:47
4. Boyle +
1:53
5. Zacharius +
6:09
Transition Two
As I dismounted and headed
into transition I could see Tom just heading out to start his run. After arriving at my bike rack after the long
run around transition I quickly did all the T2 tasks. Just before I finished I saw first Mick and
shortly thereafter Jack come running in.
I knew they were both likely less than a minute behind me—oh-oh, trouble
in River City! I was going to have to
find a way to run a little better than I have been recently.
I completed T2 in 1:23. This
was 44th OA (82.4 %-tile) and I was once again just 5th
in my AG—not really what I needed at this point. Tom put 15 more seconds on me but I actually
was 2 seconds faster than Mick and a vital 27 seconds faster than Jack—these
would prove to be very valuable seconds.
Here is where we were after T2:
1. Dillon --------
2. Christofferson + 1:11
3. Syrop +
2:04
4. Boyle +
2:35
5. Zacharius +
6:23
The Run
As I start the run it
occurs to me that I actually feel pretty good.
I can tell right away that I’m running faster than I have been as of
late—not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but faster for me. I decide to not turn around and look for my
pursuers. I know there is a turnaround
at 2.5 miles and if I’m still ahead of Mick and Jack then I’ll still have 0.8
miles left to make tactical adjustments.
I hit the first mile in
7:53 with an average heart rate of 165bpm.
The latter number indicates that I was working pretty hard. Still, I’m encouraged by my run so far—I feel
if I can keep my pace below 8 min/mile it will make Mick and Jac o work real
hard to catch me. I decide to try to
pick my pace up—I’m feeling pretty good.
Mile 2 is completed in
7:43 with an average HR of 167. This
fills me with confidence; maybe I’ll be able to hold them off. Shortly after the 2-mile mark I feel my HR
accelerate and I feel like I’m about to pass out—hmmm, maybe I’m pushing too
hard. I back off a bit and the feeling
subsides. So much for tactical
adjustments—it’s clear I’m at my limit and if I need to go faster down the
stretch it’s doubtful I’ll have it in me.
A short distance before the turnaround I see Tom on his way home—frankly
I’m surprised to be this closed to him.
Finally, I hit the turn
and glance at my watch and begin looking for my pursuers. I don’t see them right away, which fills me
with hope. Then, to my surprise I see
Jack—he yells something at me that sounded like 45 seconds—I calculate that I’m
38 seconds in front of him. I’m
surprised to see Mick another 15 seconds later and I know he is more than a
minute behind me. I determine that Mick
won’t catch me but there still is a chance that Jack could.
There is a left turn at 3
miles and as I approach it I look back for Jack and don’t see him. This is obviously very encouraging. My 3rd mile passed in 7:52 and my
HR was now 168. I looked several more
times over the final 0.3 miles and the last time Jack yelled at me to stop
turning around and that he wasn’t going to catch me. Good thing because I was absolutely spent.
I crossed the line with a run split of 25:38 (7:46/mile average) and my HR averaged 168bpm for
the run. My overall race time was
61:43, which was good enough for 22nd OA (91.4 %-tile) and my run
was 6th best in my AG (68.9 %-tile).
My overall time was actually 35 seconds faster than last year (my run
was 18 seconds faster this year) but with my slow run, it was the 5th
fastest of my 7 races here. I ended up
beating Jack by 17 seconds and Mick by 72.
Jack had outrun me by 70 seconds but I actually outran Mick—perhaps his
strong bike killed his running legs. Tom
was 2:58 in front of me.
All in all, I’m satisfied
with the race. I obviously am still very
slow in the run and my swim was off but the bike was very encouraging and I
should be able to race well the rest of the summer—especially with the heavier
training I am currently engaged in.
Onward and upward!
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