My daugher Megan and I traveled to Nofolk Nebraka (where I went to Junior and Senior high) to participate in the annual super sprint triathlon on June 10 2006. This was Megans 6th triathlon and is a great venue for her to experiece the trill of the sport. She swam 150 yrds, biked 3 miles and run mile. She took home the gold in her age group with a great performance. It was awesome to see her have fun and build her confidence.
I raced in the longer race, but still a mini by most athletes standards, consisting of 500 yrd swim, 10 mile bike, 3 mile run. I raced in what the organizers call the head-to-head heat, in which competitive athletes are put with athletes of similar expected finish times. I was lucky to be choosen to race in the frist head-to-head heat. After pperforming some brief warming-up. I jumped into my lane and as I was getting ready for the start, fellow Omaha triathlete Jim K jumped into the lane next to me. Oh - I knew it was going to be a fast race. Jim and I have a great relationship and are both seasoned athletes. I have much respect for Jim and his accomplishments and we see each other at many local races each season. I should back up and tell you that this tri was more for my daughter than for me. But HEY, I like to think I am a competitive guy so, seeing Jim I wanted to see how I matched up with the "BIG DOGS". The 500 swim was going to be a great Thresold test for me and as we started Jim and I were neck and neck. My self assesment is that Jim is a better swimmer than me. Has very solid techniqu. We were head to head to the 300+ yrd mark. I was really feeling the lactic juice at this point but focused on my technique and worked hard to hol my position. At the 400 mark I noticed that I had gained a second or two on Jim and ended up first out of the water by this margin. As I made my way to T1, I felt good and looked forward to pushing it on the bike. Over the years I have developed some speed and efficientcy in transistions and blasted through TI beating my competition by 10 - 20 seconds. The bike was an out and back with a few false flats. We were headed into the wind on the way out. My intensity was at an 8, and I was avging 23 mph on the way out. At the turn around I was still #1 and noticed Jim and 2 others close behind. I really through the hammer done on the way back averging 25+ mph and thought that someone would catch me, but I was able to hold them off. I had another fast transition and made it on the run first. As many of you triathletes know, running of the bike, especially an intense bike is a brutal sensation. I felt I was crawling, but my actual pace was 6:27/mile. I made it to the 3/4 mile mark before Jim finally caught me. I held on but his running was incredible. I was able to maintain sight of him and actually felt I was ganing on him in the 3rd mile, but he ended up putting a total of :45 seconds on me. He took 1st overall with me taking second. I placed 1st in my age group beating my closest competitor by over 11 mins. I felt good about my overall perfomance given that this race was not even a low priority race for me. I had a tough week of training going into the tri and still had 6 hours of weekend training to do following this race. But as Jim and I were talking during our 2 mile cool down after the race, we really pushed each other out there and that is what competition is all about.
If you ever have an opportunity to do this race. I highly recommend it as a low key, grass roots event. One that is great for new triathletes and even children!
Life is a Journey - Enjoy it!
Coach Kevin
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