Take On The Heat 2008

I had a great race this morning at the 2008 Take On The Heat sprint tri up in The Colony, TX. Refreshingly, there wasn't that much heat with cloudy skies and temps in the 70s - so race conditions were excellent.

I ended up finishing the 350M swim, 12mi bike, and 5K run course in just under 1 hour and 10 minutes. This garnered me 15th place out of 52 in the M 35-39 age group and 56th out of 283 finishers overall.

Here were my splits:

• Swim: 6:57.3 (1:59/100M, 114th place)
• T1: 1:51.75
• Bike: 34:54.35 (20.6 mph, 29th place)
• T2: 1:02.00
• Run: 25:09.90 (8:04/mi, 109th place)
• Total: 1:09:55.30

Last year's performance:

• Swim: 7:35.35 (2:10/100M)
• T1: 2:24.30
• Bike: 39:28.85 (18.84 mph)
• T2: 0:59.55
• Run: 28:46.30 (9:13/mi)
• Total: 1:19:14.35

Compared with my sprint tri PR (1:08.42) at the Old College Tri, my official time is a little slower. However, I think my performance was actually better because (1) the swim was 50 meters longer than OCT, (2) the bike course was about 12.7 miles (according to my Garmin GPS - about 0.4 miles longer than OCT), and (3) the run course was about 3.15 miles (also per GPS - about 0.1 miles longer than OCT). So my bike and run speed/pace were actually 21.8 MPH and 7:59/mi, respectively. So except for a slightly slower than PR swim, this is definitely my best performance at a sprint distance ever.

Full results at: http://results.active.com/pages/page.jsp?eventID=1623034&pubID=3

Due to vacations (Matt & Derek), injury (Don), and not registering in time (Jarrod), I ended up doing this race "by myself." But actually I ran into so many people that I knew that it wasn't lonely at all. Formally met Lee, a marathoner who I've seen at many running races (FWRC, Don Zetnick's Winter 10K, White Rock Marathon), who was doing his first tri ever. Despite being several minutes slower on the swim,bike, and transitions, Lee finished less than 30 seconds behind me due to a blistering 20:27 5K (6:33/mi pace and 11th place overall for the run!).

I also ran into Cy & Misty from Team-In-Training who did the race (Cy placed 30th with a time of 1:07.08 - nice!) and was cheered on by Sabrina from Dynamic Touch Massage who was working the race (I had met her at the PlayTri Festival back in April). So the race was enjoyable for the comraderie as well.

Afterwards, I met up with some friends at Osaka Sushi in Plano for a great recovery meal. :-)