Friday, July 04, 2014

Independence Day Triathlon

Independence Triathlon
Finishers Metal
I enjoyed my second sprint triathlon of the summer this morning.  It was in Tradewinds Park so the swim was in a flat water lake, the run and bike were flat (no bridges), and there were no 180 degree turns.  And I did a new personal best knocking a minute off my previous time bringing it down to 1:09:39.

Still, my time and my position were a little disappointing.  On my previous tri this summer, I was in the top half of my age group and only five minutes behind the winners.  Today, I finished in 1:09:39 (versus 1:10:33 last month) which put me 161st out of 367 which put me just into the first half of the people.  But it only earned me a 12th out of 18 in my category and I was a full 17 minutes off the winning time.

My group, males age 56-60, was weirdly fast. Maybe it's because there was no International Distance so all the more intense athletes dropped down into the sprint. This might be it but it doesn't explain why my specific age group was so fast.  For instance, with my time of 1:09, if I was in the younger 50-54 age group, I would have been 10th out of 27, well into the top half versus well into the bottom half in my actual group.  But then, if I was 61-65, 1:09 would have gotten me a 6th out of 10. And I would have had the same position (6th out of 10) if I was 65-69.  So it seems that it was the old men in general who were extremely fast.  The winner in my age group (a Clay Wilson) was 16th in the overall race and finished in under 53 minutes which is very impressive, arguably elite.

2014 Independence Day Triathlon (.25s-10b-3r)
Race Results for John Edelson
Male 55-59 on 07/04/2014
SwimT1BikeT2RunTotal
Time0:08:531:390:30:551:480:26:2501:09:39.50
Pace/Speed0:35:3219.408:48
Cat Place9/1812/1815/1815/1811/1812/18
Cat %533518184135
Sex Place116/232130/232143/232182/232119/232121/232
Sex %504439224948
OA Place167/368207/368184/368289/368162/368161/368
OA %554450225656
Click here for Full Results

List of John's Triathlons
1:09:39  July 4th, 2014     Independence Day Tradewinds Park M 55-59
1:10:33  June 8th, 2014   Mack Cycle Key Biscayne - M 56-60
1:22:15 July 22nd, 2012   Mack Cycle Key Biscayne - M 51-55
1:17:53  August 19 , 2012   Mack Cycle Key Biscayne - M 51-55
1:24:18  2005   Tri Fort Lauderdale 2005. This was along the beach and in Birch state park
There's also a tri from 2005 to be found...I can't remember if it was in Key Biscayne or up near Del Ray.

Relevant Links:
http://www.athlinks.com/   - A collection of all my times on registered races
Daniellas Run (the one I did with Kate and David)


Made it Out of the Water!


1 comment:

BBat50 said...

I just had my first swim lesson. I called the Ft Lauderdale Swimming Hall of Fame around noon and booked a lesson with Trisha at 2:30 same day. I was thrilled.

She watched me swim and asked if after I swim" After you swim, are you tired and out of breath? Do your shoulders hurt?"

"Yes I'm tired and breathless. And my shoulders hurt. So does everything else that I can still feel...I'm 56 and trying to go fast."

But once we got past the niceties, she picked up three things:

1. Breathing. Breath in and then breath out. Don't hold your breath. You don't have time to do you inbreath and outbreath both when your mouth is out of the water. As soon as you've got your breath in, start breathing out.

2. Elbows, bent, not straight! This is so new to me that it has me moving in all sorts of new ways but she says that it's improving.

3. Roll back and forth with the strokes, don't lie with my chest just pointing to the bottom.

Revolutionary stuff, do you think I'll be ready to do this in my next tri, just 13 days away (with a 4 day trip in the middle)?