Buster Britton Sprint - Race Report

This morning was Birmingham's own Buster Britton Sprint Triathlon. It takes place during the weekend of the Southeast Regional Xterra Championship at Oak Mtn. St. Park. The Park will see a thousand triathletes come through the gates this weekend so it's an exciting time.

As usual, at 4:30 this morning the alarm goes off. Oatmeal and coffee are the meal of choice. This is just a meal that I'm comfortable with and that brings results. No real stresses this morning. I'm well familiar with this course and won't need a lot of equipment to complete the sprint distance.

I rocked out to U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" on the short drive to the park. People were pointing and starring as I played the air drums going doing the highway. I'm oblivious to all.

The organizers made a few changes to the course, so after setting up my transition area, I made myself familiar with the changes. The biggest change was the location of the transition area. Just like last week's race, there would be a long run from the swim to my bike. What's up with that?

The second change was the run portion would be a bit different than before. No biggee right? Wrong. More on that later.

Alright let's go. Here are the distances: S 400yd, B 13 mi, R 3 mi.

Swim: I hit hard from the start. I wasn't going to be intimidated by other swimmers this time. This time I was the one swimming over people, bumping, and grabbing. I felt great throughout. Spotting was good. Form was great. Out of the water in 6:08. My goal was 6:10.

T1: Man I was breathing hard. The hard swim had pushed me to the limit. I needed every bit of the long run to my bike to catch my breath. No shirt and no socks doesn't gain me entrance to Denny's but it gets me on my bike and on the road. Time 2:34

Bike: I was still breathing hard once I made it on to the bike, but I managed to find my groove and start hitting it hard. I started knocking off the fast swimmers one by one. The hills at Oak Mtn are always ways challenging, but I had experience on my side. I knew when to push it and when to recover, but still the hills were keeping my speed down below my goal. I was avg'ing 20 and I needed 21. I hit the turn around and knew that profile back lost elevation and I would have my chance to make up time. I did just that. I came into T2 with an average of 21.3. Bike time 36:43.

T2 - I took my shoes off on the bike so I ran barefooted to my rack. Helmet off, shoes on. Let's go. Time: 56 seconds. booyah!

Run - Oh snap, this wasn't going to be as easy as I thought. Where were my legs? Where was the energy? The oomph? I ran nonetheless. There was no one in front of me at all. Crazy. I started seeing the pros coming in from their run about a half mile into mine. They were flying! Now for this all important change to the course. This year they included a little used side road back in the woods that had a steep incline before the turn around. What? Oh this sucked. It was killing me. With about a half mile to go, I kicked it in. I wish that I had started the push a little sooner as I think that I may have been able to sustain it, but you live and you learn. Only 3 guys passed me on the run so that was an improvement. I passed one, so I was negative two for the run portion. Run time 22:24 (I think?)

Into the race shoot for a total time of 1:09:03. I finished 46/400 or so overall. No idea about my age group.

Big Picture: Good training race. I was glad to get the monkey off my back after last week's performance. I need to work on speed on the bike if I'm going be able to play with the big boys. I'm back in the saddle again tomorrow for more work. Thanks for reading.