Race Report: Lake Mills Triathlon

What a beautiful day for the first triathlon of the year. Blue skies, little to no wind and highs in the upper 70s.

The race started at 7, so I set the alarm clock for 4 but woke up at 3 ready to go. I think I was a little nervous for this one. It's the first tri of the year, so I wanted to do well and show that all the hard work is paying off. Plus, Lake Mills gets a good turn out and plenty of tough competition. I have to give Cheri a lot of credit here. I told her I wanted to leave at 4:30 (not exactly the time she likes to get up on Sundays), and she was ready to go at exactly 4:30. I was ready at 4:32.

After signing in and going through body marking, I set up my transition area and headed out for a short bike warm up. Then it was time to get out the wetsuit and get in the water.


(Looks like someone needs to get some sun.)

I stayed in the water as long as I could to get used to the temp before heading over for the start - wave 4, men's 25-35.





The Swim: I started up front hoping to get a good draft off someone faster who could pull me to the finish. The plan worked great for the first 50 feet, and then I lost the draft and couldn't get back in line so I spent the whole time on the outside swimming on my own. It was a pretty good swim for me, and I came out of the water around the 6:40 mark I think. There's a long run from the lake to transition so my official swim time is...

Swim Time: 7:20

Swim Highlights: The wetsuit repair worked. The goggles are awesome (Aqua Sphere if you're wondering which brand). No panic attack. I wore earplugs to try and avoid vertigo and it worked. I was going to stuff the ear plugs in my pocket after the swim, but when I went to take them out I noticed one fell out when I took my cap off so I pulled the other one out and threw it...right at someone...sorry.



T1: 1:20

The Bike: The bike went really well, although they started my wave after the novices so I had a ton of bikes to pass...mountain bikes, comforts, you name it... Before the race I was afraid that might affect my bike time trying to pass a lot of riders but I don't think it did. Had I known they had an elite wave I would've signed up for that so I would've been in the first wave, but it all worked out in the end. I'm happy with my time and speed, but once again my power was lower than I thought it would be. I averaged 276 watts for an hour at the TT 2 weeks ago, but today I could only muster a 260 average. Not bad, but I would like to see a bigger number. Either way, I averaged 23.6 mph and set the 12th fastest bike time. I'm happy with it.

Bike Time: 38:07

T2: :41



Here I am giving Cheri a thumbs up as I come out of transition and start the run. "Thumbs up" for "I'm in a lot of pain, but I didn't die in the water."

Run: The run hurt, as it should. I felt like I was running slow until the first mile marker when I saw I ran a 6:20. At that point, I was hoping to hold that pace because I knew it would be a sub 20 5K, which was my goal.


Run Time: 19:43 (a 6:20 pace...how's that for consistent?)

Total Time: 1:07:09

Overall: 19/648
Age Group: 3/42

After the race I went back to transition to grab some of my stuff and discovered that my swim cap and new goggles fell out of the sleeve of my wetsuit when I was running from the water to transition. $20 on goggles for one swim. Such a waste. I really liked those goggles, easily the best ones I've ever owned.




After that, we checked the results, saw I had an award coming and then wandered over to the food table. On the way, guess what we saw...



What a great day! Great weather. Great race. I got my goggles back. I didn't die on the swim. I got a award. And to top it all off, Cheri and I are heading out for a bike ride in a few minutes. It doesn't get much better than this (although winning the lottery would easily top all that...maybe I should buy a ticket today).