Yes, I'm now hooked enough on this triathlon thing that I'm calling it a race season. The whole thing has gotten kind of out of control. The decision to do my first on in July was made in early June so it happened pretty fast. But since then I've ended up with all kinds of stuff:
A Wetsuit
A racing suit
A new road bike to replace my 1990 Trek 1400
A Time Trial/Triathlon Bike - yes, I couldn't resist. Two bikes is over the top but once I rode one of these it was an easy choice. It's freaking fast.
Several pairs of goggles
Hmm, I think that's it except for other tri-geek stuff like racing belts, all kinds of bizarre carbo-goo, and I'm working on getting a new helmet (spending money to protect my brain better seems resaonable) and even some race wheels. Exactly what I needed though, another excuse to buy expensive toys.
What's driving all of this? Well, for one I'm a tad on the obsessive side, but that probably couldn't be clearer by now. But really a lot of it is that I started having some success and that's a hell of a motivator. Here's how things went:
| Race |
Date |
Total Participants |
Division Participants |
Overall Place |
Div Place |
Swim Place |
Bike Place |
Run Place |
Swim Pace |
Bike Pace |
Run Pace |
Swim % |
Bike % |
Run % |
Div % |
Overall % |
| SeaFair 2004 |
18-Jul-04 |
1044 |
112 |
425 |
73 |
877 |
291 |
426 |
2.19 |
19.66 |
7:55 |
84% |
28% |
41% |
65% |
41% |
| Beaver Lake 2004 |
14-Aug-04 |
620 |
65 |
196 |
35 |
277 |
173 |
279 |
2.09 |
19.38 |
8:05 |
45% |
28% |
45% |
54% |
32% |
| YMCA Lake Samm 2004 |
28-Aug-04 |
367 |
26 |
26 |
4 |
87 |
22 |
44 |
1.60 |
20.33 |
7:07 |
24% |
6% |
12% |
15% |
7% |
| Kirkland 2004 |
19-Sep-04 |
787 |
88 |
116 |
22 |
309 |
120 |
145 |
1.51 |
18.03 |
7:16 |
39% |
15% |
18% |
25% |
15% |
Each % column at the end is what % of people did better than me overall, or I was in the top X%. for each discipline and/or overall. What really helped me was the improvments in my swim pace (min/100yards) and run pace (min/mile). Bike pace is improving, note Kirkland is a very hilly course so it's not really apples-to-apples with the other races. And all of these were with the old bike, can't wait to see if the investment listed above pans out. Note that since each race is different, actual times are meaningless here so I stick to paces and relative performance to other people's results. I'm looking at doing 8 or 9 races next year, including the half-Ironman in Spokane. Now if it would just stop getting dark at 3:30 so I can leave the gym!