I'm now back in Victoria after my first race of the year, the Honolulu Continental Cup. I'm a little bummed at the final result, as I thought that I would run faster than I actually did.
Race day began nice and early, with wake-up at 3:45am for the 6:00am start.
A light breakfast, make sure I have everything, then I headed out in the dark at 4:40 to ride down to the race site.
I had #27, and as a result I was a ways back being called out to choose a starting spot. All the spots on the right side were taken, so I decided to head to the far left, and try to get some cleaner water out there. Let's just say the right side was much faster on the start. The beach curved that way, and those on the right were able to run on the beach a bit longer, and longer in shallow water. After diving in and taking 10 strokes, I looked up and noticed that I was already 4-5 body lengths behind those on the right. I got on Andrew's feet for a bit, but then decided to try and get over and join the group on the right. Bad move. I should have stayed on Andrew's feet, swam straight for the far end, and ended up making it to the front group with Andy Potts and Brian Fleischmann. I wasn't able to bridge up at that point, and instead settled in with a group and sat on some feet for the swim. Our group of 9 guys came out of the water 25 sec down on Potts.
Felt good on the bike, our group (including Matt Reed, Jarrod Shoemaker, and others) went hard trying to close the gap to Potts and Fleischmann who went off the front. The first couple of km's on the bike were on a rough section of road, and I ended up losing my glasses that were tucked up in the front of my helmet. Not a good way to start. Our group on the bike was 10 guys, with 4-5 guys doing a lot of work. I took my fair share of pulls, sitting out every other pull basically. We ended up coming off the bike 1:40 down on the lead two, and 1:00 up on the next chase pack behind us.
Coming out of T2 starting the run, we had to make a 180 degree turn once over the timing mats. I stepped on the mat and attempted to turn at the same time. Wham...down to the ground I went, landing on my left side. I popped up quickly and starting running. For some reason my legs (calves) were tight at the beginning of the run, and I loosened up after 2 km or so. The last km of the run was tough, as I fell off a bit, and was caught by a couple athletes.
I ended up finishing in 18th place, just missing out on scoring some ITU points by 16 seconds.
Results for the race can be found here.
We had Sunday and Monday to relax in Honolulu before heading back to Victoria. I went out for some beers with some of the American guys after the race...we went to a place called the Yard House, which had over 100 beers on tap! What a place, lots of local brews as well.
Monday morning I headed out to Pearl Harbor with another American triathlete to visit Pearl Harbor. We took a shuttle at 6am, arriving at 6:30, an hour before the doors opened. By 7:30 the line-up behind us was huge...so it's a good thing we got there early. Pearl Harbor was quite the experience, I'll post some pictures from there in the next blog entry.
The transition zone (taken after the race)
The swim exit, one big loop down and back
AP and I after the race.
Beach on Sun afternoon
Waikiki Beach
2 comments:
Nicely done Dano - tough luck with starting on the wrong end of the swim line up. Sounds like you had to dig a little too deep to get out where you needed to be,...likely impacting your run too. Best in the future, I'm looking forward to seeing a breakthrough for you this year.
SCurry
thanks Scott, I figure I was due for about a minute or so faster run, which would have been great, as it would have netted me some ITU points.
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