Thursday, June 26, 2014

Mohican Endurance Festival - Sprint Triathlon

The Mohican area in Ohio is a gorgeous place that I enjoy visiting to hike any season of the year.  It is most famous for its forests, river, gorges, mountain bike trails, and in general just about any type of outdoor recreation.  It seems like every time I'm there I stumble upon some crazy race going on.  This weekend it was a 50 mile and 100 mile trail run.   Those athletes are super humans!

When I saw HFP Racing announce they were going to hold a triathlon there for the first time, I knew I wanted to sign up!  I did the mini distance last September at Portage Lakes and figured I would try sprint this year.  750 meter swim, 20 k bike, and 5 k run.  Sounded like a good idea in January when I signed up at least! As the date approached I just felt my swimming was still verrrrry weak.  I swam at least once a week all winter / spring and then everyday once summer hit and I could swim in our pond.  I still couldn't go 50 meters without being out of breath.  I took the open water swim clinic they had the day before and it eased my mind a bit (I wasn't as bad as I thought when comparing myself to the others) but I still was nervous about how far it was and more importantly how bad I would do.  I set the goal of being top 50% in my age group.

The race:

Swim time plus time it took to trudge up a loooong steep, muddy trail (mostly walking per advice from others)  = 16:41.  I definitely side stroked just as much as front crawl.  It seemed to keep me in the ballgame though so I can't complain.  Lots of improvement can be made here though!

Bike section was rumored to be realllllly hilly, including a climb over a mile in length, but I didn't think it was bad at all!  Time = 43:06 (avg 17.3 mph).  It rained the whole time so I braked a lot on down hills and turns since the roads were slick.

Run was way more hilly than my jelly legs wanted it to be.  Time = 27:30.


My total time was 1:29 which gave me 2nd in my age group.  I was happy!

green swim cap.  nick took the photo when I was actually swimming right! 
up a long trail towards transition


I must have been going so fast, it was a blur ha

Uphill finish!



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