Racer: Stuart Austin
Race: Odyssey Half Iron Triathlon
Date: Saturday, September 24, 2005
Location: Lake Anna State Park, VA
Race Type: Triathlon - Half Ironman
Age Group: Male 45 - 49
Time: 6:11:47
Overall Place: 164 / 212
Age Group Place: 6/ ?? Official Results not posted yet
URL: http://www.oarevents.com/results/temp_results_HIT.xls
Comment: First ever 1/2 Iron distance

So I decided at the beginning of the year that since I had unlimited
opportunity to overtime hours on my current project, that I would
pass
on racing this year. As the summer wore down, and after months of
50+
hour weeks, I decided I'd earned the right to do one late-season
race.

Normally I would have picked the Osprey Sprint Tri, but I figured
that's a lot of driving for very little racing ... and I guess
Odyssey
didn't have the kind of numbers they were looking for, they were
sending out reminder emails up 'til the last minute. So on a whim I
picked Lake Anna as my race. It seemed to make more sense to try and
meet my long-time goal of racing the 1/2 iron distance if I was only
going to have one day of racing this year.

Despite the long work weeks, I've tried to get in one or two workouts
a week in. Typically a 2 - 3 hour run, ride or brick workout on
Saturday and/or Sunday. Been pretty consistent with that, at least 3
weekends a month. Nothing during the week, which means I'm very
rested for the weekend outings. Haven't swum (swam?) over 100m since
my last race last year. I hearby inaugurate a new trend - crow about
how _little_ you trained for such-and-such a race, rather than how
_much_.

My only goal was to pace myself to finish the distance, and feel like
I was really racing (i.e. no walking at the end). Unoffically my
times were about 38 minutes for the swim, 3:10 for the bike and 2:20
or so on the run; actually I lost my watch a few weeks ago so those
numbers are based on looking at the race clock when I had the chance.
Kept myself well fed (including solid food, can't beat a PBJ now and
then) and hydrated, which did mean several time-consuming dashes into
the woods.

So I think I did pace myself pretty well - actually my run times in
training are usually about 2:10 for that distance, so I wasn't dying
all that badly after the swim and bike. I really need to get faster
in
the run, perhaps I'll focus on that over the winter. I do all my
running on trails, so the road course felt weird underfoot; I ended
up
running on the grassy berm the entire race which felt much more
natural.


I have to ding Odyssey on their no-frills approach though. I feel
that $130 is a significant amount of money for a race fee - I guess
there's some small amount of logic that a longer race should cost
more
(though the way they have the course set up, the bike and run are
essentially two laps of roughly Olympic distance). Vols were in
short
order - one turn on the bike course was marked only with some arrows
painted in the road. The post race food defined "on the cheap" -
bread, processed turkey, ham and american cheese. And of course
Coke.
No Diet Coke, Sprite, ginger ale ... just Coke. Geez, how much harder
is it to pick up two or three types of soda instead of just one?

Nevertheless, my goals were met - raced the distance and had a stress-
free day to be the one big event of the year. Now it's back to work!

Cheers
Stuart