Race Report: Tri Waco Sprint, July 26, 2009

The story of this race weekend began when we learned the event sold out days before Mike W got around to registering. He couldn’t race which is a shame because he probably would have won our age group; he would have had a solid shot at winning the men’s overall as well.

Heading to Waco was still a homecoming of sorts since Mike’s a Baylor grad. We tooled around town, saw the bears in their habitat on Baylor campus, and had our pre-race ritual of Olive Garden pasta.

The Tri Waco Spint & Olympic Triathlon is the first event produced in this city since the early 90’s. Years ago, a 15 year old Lance Armstrong was a triathlon prodigy and won the course. It’s a great venue for a race. I can’t figure why the long absence of events.

Demonstrating how this sport continues its viral growth, another old friend of Mike’s, Dusty, ran his second race today with his wife and three young kids in the crowd to cheer him on. Dusty did great. I’ve done something like 10 races and I barely stayed ahead of Dusty today. We finished within a minute of each other.

Weeks of morning SPIN classes seemed to have paid off in an improvement of my bike performance. Weeks of neglecting the pool and binge training for the run showed up my results too.

My time was 1:27:39. I’ll need big improvements in my run time and a smarter strategy for open water swimming to hit my stated goal.

We all agree that the Tri Waco is an event we’d like to do in 2010. Especially since Mike was locked out this year!

Race Report: Cleburne Iron Horse Triathlon – May 31, 2009

This post comes a couple months post-event.

Mike W’s friend since grade school Tom P kicked-off his triathlon career by joining the two of us at Cleburne’s 2nd Annual Iron Horse Triathlon.

Mike picked up some hardware by placing second in our age group with a time of 1:15:29. The award took the form of a painted railroad spike. The “Iron Horse” is an early 20th century locomotive on display in Cleburne signifying its history as a railroad town.

I’m lucky to race and train with folks generally well above my skill and fitness level. Doing so keeps me striving to get better. Tom proved his triathlon aptitude with a great first first race coming in at 1:23:53.

I ran more like the slow and steady steam powered locomotive! I got there in the end and finished strong but a slow run push my time to 1:29:54.

Not a PB, but I ran finally ran a race in 2009

Around 400 athletes came out the Fort Worth suburb of Benbrook, Texas - home to one of the nicer YMCA facilities you’ll ever see - for the seventh annual Tri-Benbrook.

In a show of how triathlon continues to grow in popularity, a show of hands before the race demonstrated that perhaps a third or more of the participants came to run their first Tri.

The rain held back, mostly. The wind whipped at about 20-30 mph. The clouds kept the sun and heat at bay. So, it was great racing weather all said.

I ran this course faster last year. No excuses, I was in better shape a year ago.

So while I’m always pushing for a personal best, I’ll take this result as a good barometer of what I need to do to hit my goals for the remainder of the year. Said goals:

1. Complete a 70.3 Half Ironman race in under six-hours.
2. Complete an Olympic or Quarter-Iron race in under 2:50.
3. Complete a Sprint distance race in under 1:15.

All three represent incremental improvements over my previous race results. There it is. Now, it’s time to pick some races and dust off that training plan!