I was sore yesterday, and I’m sore now, and we’ll see about tomorrow, but yesterday morning’s triathlon went well. The Santa Cruz Sentinel Triathlon is an Olympic distance race, which means it’s officially a 1.5K swim, 40K bike, and 10K run.
Update: The organizers sent an apologetic email after the fact letting all racers know that the run distance was mis-measured. Instead of running 6.2 miles (that’s 10K), we all ran 6.85 miles. That makes me feel much better about my run.
My total time was 2:28:00, which put me 143rd overall out of 856 total entrants. I was 19th in the M35-39 age group. (Full results, if you’re interested.)
I’ve competed in the Sentinel twice before, in 1999 and 2001, and I’m not faster now. 😉 Still, the bike course was lengthened by a bit under two miles sometime between 2001 and 2006, so it’s not all age. (And, we now know, the run was mis-measured in 2006.) I’m glad they moved to chip timing, too, so I can do a blow-by-blow breakdown of each different leg
Swim
Time: 27:54
Rank: 372 (Yeah, never my best leg… maybe I’ll have to try a warmup sometime.)
Transition 1
Time: 4:26 (Knew it was slow, but oof… although that does include the run from the beach to the transition, not just my clumsy efforts to remove the wetsuit.)
Bike
Time: 1:08:27
Rank: 140
Average speed: 21.7 MPH
Transition 2
Time: 1:49
Run
Time: 45:24 for 6.85 miles (In 1999, I ran ~42:00 for 10K, by my watch. In 2001, 40:07 for 10K, back when I was running a lot.)
Rank: 77
Average speed: 7:19 per mile 6:37 per mile
In 2001, I was 134th, with a 2:12:51. In 1999, I was 141st with a 2:10:30.
All these details are blog as backup brain. When I look back in five or ten years, I hope I’m racing still…and this year’s times are not too out of reach.