Chicopee race results

I was a little sore from the previous week's workouts going into this race. It was not an A race, but I wanted to do well. I decided to ride easy yesterday (about 22 miles - much of it real easy as I had kids with me for 10 miles of this) and I skipped Fran in order to go into the race a little rested. I probably should have revised Thursday and Friday as well as like I already said, I was sore going into the race.

The official splits are not on the website yet, but my overall time was about 1:35:35 vs. 1:36:33 last year - about a minute improvement. I was expecting more than this. I will check the splits to see where my issues are.

I think a lot more people did the race this year as my overall placing was 69th compared to 42nd last year.

Had a real solid bike - I believe I beat last year's bike time by 3 minutes.

The swim - holy cow! The swim start at Lake Placid was more docile. It was crazy. A couple of minutes before the race was supposed to start there was an announcement saying that there would be a 15 minute delay because the state police were not all there yet. I decided that I would wait a few minutes before doing my swim warmup as it was a little cool (but starting to warm up). A few minutes later they said they were ready to go, played the National Anthem and then started us - nobody was ready. You just had to start from wherever you were - I generally start a little wide and feather my way into the group as it starts to settle down - I was right in the middle of the mess. Elbows, feet and bodies all over the place. I did not panic, as a matter of fact, I swam very aggressively. I kicked hard to ensure that no one swam over me (yes they were trying) and kept a very good line. By the time we got the first turn buoy it started to thin out. I just followed bodies and even found some feet to draft off of. I hardly sighted at all thoughout the entire swim. I'm not sure how my swim compares to last year - waiting for the results to get published. I swam without a wetsuit since the water was nice, it was only a half mile, and I wanted to speed up my first transition.

I did the run in 29:47 last year. My recollection from the results that were posted at the race site is that my time was around 30:30. I am certainly disappointed here as I was convinced that I was running real well. There is a steep hill which I ran agressively both times (two loops) and other than that I concentrated on good posture and quick feet.

This is the first sprint I did this year if you don't count the duathlons. Sprints are painful. You give it everything you have for about 90 minutes more or less depending on the distances. I biked real hard as some of my best runs in sprints have come after a good effort on the bike. I did some on bike stretches coming down the final stretch. I transitioned quickly and off I went - felt decent on the run - what went wrong?