Ludlow Boys & Girls Club Triathlon - 2009 Race Report

OFFICIAL RESULTS: 28th OA out of 278, 6th M25-29 out of 20; 1:16:07
I was on the fence with this race this year, but in the end I ended up doing it. I wanted to do the race so I could compare my time from 2 years ago when I first did this race, which was my first ever race in triathlon. On the other hand I didn't want to do the race because I have much bigger goals to worry about, like training for Amica RI 70.3, which is literally right around the corner. So instead of not doing the race at all I treated the day before the race as a regular training day and decided to go for a 43 mile bike ride. The ride went great and my legs felt very fresh on the 43 mile ride. I ended up averaging 20.7 mph on that ride. So with this long ride before the Ludlow Sprint I didn't have high expectations about finishing high up in my age group and I had predicted that I would finish in an about 1:20 and 5th in my age group.

Swim 1/2 Mile: 41st OA, 5th AG; 11:26 (2006 - 13:54)
This was my first open water swim of the season! Needless to say the swim went well anyway and I settled in comfortably and drafted someone the whole way out and back across Haviland Pond.

T-1: 2:26
I was happy with my swim time and when I got to transition I took my time in getting on my bike gear, which explains the amount of time I was in T-1!

Bike 13.58 Miles (actually 13.06): 67th OA, 10th AG; 36:58 (22.04 MPH) (2006 - 42:30, 19.17 MPH)
I was not looking forward to this portion of the race because of my long ride the day before, but I was still surprised to learn after the race that I still averaged 22 mph, which is great considering! The first 5 miles of this leg I could feel all the muscles I used the day before and it took some time for them to warm up and get use to biking again today. After those first 5 miles I was fine even though I knew there was nothing in the tank for this short 14 mile ride. It made me wonder what was going to be left for the run...

T-2: 1:54
This was pretty uneventful, but again took my time to get my running socks on only because last time I ran without socks was at the JCC race and I ended up with small blisters on my heels, but I think that was due to the rain conditions.

Run 4.02 miles: 5th OA, 2nd AG; 23:21 (5:48/mile) (2006 - 28:41 - 7:08/mile)
After the bike leg I had I was surprised that my legs actually felt great once I started running. I felt a little sluggish at first, but then it went away. I had no idea what I was going to pull off for a time here so I was shocked when I got home to find out I broke the 6 min per mile pace.

Summary: All and all it was a great race and I was happy with how well I did. I wish I had finished a little higher up in my age group, but that's okay, I'll take it. This past week was a great week for workouts and this performance really topped things off. I'll have another training report update in the next few days about my training volume over the last few weeks.

On another note my 2006 time was 1:25:06 and I finished 8th in my AG and 67th OA. I've come a long way since that considering I beat my time from 2 years ago by almost 10 minutes!