I like to have many short term racing goals and it was weird not having a triathlon in May. I went to Buck's county Pennsylvania for the Independence Triathlon. It was just a sprint triathlon but it would be a good warm up for the Ironman 70.3 Syracuse in late June. These triathlons typically have just two swim waves, first the men and then the women about 5 minutes later. Sometimes it can get rough around the buoy's but this course wasn't bad since the first buoy wasn't close to the start of the race. This was a wetsuit legal race and I knew every second would count so getting out of the wetsuit fast was vital.
My swim time wasn't any better or worse then previous years but I gave up too much time to the other men in my age group. I was able to quickly transition from my wetsuit to the bike. It was a very steep up hill start and one guy got clipped onto his pedals but didn't have any momentum. He fell over just to the left of me, any closer and he might have taken me down too. There were a series of rolling hills on the bike course. Being light I powered up the hills only to get passed on the downhill by riders that out weighed me. I rode well but wished the course was longer so I could have made up the time I lost on the swim.
I made it down the hill into transition without crashing on the speed bumps. I thought my transition time was good but looking at the results it's clear I need to work on my transitions.
I forgot how to setup my Garmin watch for multi sport events so I only had accumulative time. I can tell how hard I'm running but I like seeing my pace on the watch. I was running so fast that I had a "side stitch" pain but it was only a two mile run and I didn't want to slow down. The run course was an out and back and I saw Robert had a big lead and couldn't be caught. I knew I couldn't win my age group so I raced to make sure no one else in my age group passed me.
I finished second in my age group and was photographed with the classic one leg photo.
It took longer to drive to the race then it took to finish the race but it was an enjoyable race and I would go back.
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