Triathlon Season Finale

The Findlay Lake Sprint triathlon was my final race for the 2007 season. I think it was the most fun I had in doing a triathlon this year. The morning started out with thunderstorms and heavy downpours at times which lasted until 6:45 am. At that time the clouds cleared and we even saw the sun peak through before 8:00 am.

The lake was warm and calm. We started the swim on the other side of the yellow line and we swam to the yellow buoys on our right until we got to the orange buoy where we turned back to swim to shore. The weird thing about the man made lake was when you first got in you felt like you were sinking in some black miry quick sand. This black sooty stuff floated up your legs and turned the area all black. I just made sure not to swallow any water. After we swam out for about 20 feet the water was normal. I felt strong during the swim and I finished the 1/4 miles in 9:38.

As you can see from the photo, by not have much equipment to mess with in transitions both my T1 and T2's were fast. My T1 was 36 seconds. My last post about transitions helped me to focus on keeping it simple in my transitions. I racked my bike on the last rack near the bike exit. This way I didn't have to run far with my bike.
With all the rain we had the roads were wet. I was very careful to take all corners SLOW. We also had 4 rail road crossings and 1 train that I almost got caught by and two gravel patchy areas we had to ride on. I met people that flatted and slid off their bikes due to the conditions but I managed to have fun and push the pace to finish 14.6 miles in 40:56 averaging around 21 miles per hour. My T2 time was a blazing 13 seconds. Ha, Beat that.

The run was a beautiful wet and muddy undulating trail. I loved running fast on muddy trails slipping and almost falling all over the place. I finished the trail run in 20:58 with an overall time of 1:12:55 and placing 6th out of 111 and 1st in the 45-49 age group. See race results link.