One Clydesdale’s Journey

The weather was perfect, the wind wasn’t too bad, the water was calm with a good temp for a hard swim and the Tri-ing for Children’s race was awesome.

The Clydesdale division was tuff and bigger this time around with 16 of us all total.

And the top 9 (including yours truly) all came in with a time in the 1:20’s. And there was only 8 minutes and change separating all of us.

Unfortunately, I was the ninth one with a time of 1:29:48

But, and this is the most important part, I came in under 1:30 which was one of my major goals!

The lesson I learned; one which I tell people all the time based on all the studying that I’ve done (and I might add I know better) is to never, I repeat Never change anything I race day!

If you haven’t done it during training, then you have no business doing it on race day, period!

My bright decision was to save time in transition (of which I saved a whole whopping 4 seconds) was to eat my nutrition on the ride instead of during the transition.

Well as I was running my bike out I tore open the package of Gu and sucked that down with no problem and headed out on the bike course. Once I on the course I opened my package of peanut butter (Justin’s Nut Butter – great stuff) and sucked half of it into my mouth.

It took me 5+ miles down the road before I was able to swallow that first bit and get it all out of my mouth so that I could breathe normal. That amounts to one third of the total ride that I wasn’t at my peak!

My next big decision was to go with the Shot Blocks instead of the Sports Beans on the bike. Something else that I’ve never tried to eat other then one block that Shelly gave me during an easy ride that we were doing.

Well, I started to chew it and I inhaled a small piece of it into my throat. Several minutes later and after sounding a lot like one of my cats with a hairball, I was finally able to get it out of there.

The price of that little mistake meant that my bike was only 4 minutes faster than last year even with the new bike.

Okay, so even with all that said, it was still an awesome race and I can’t complain with time since I managed to meet my overall goal of coming in under the 1:30 mark.

At least now when I tell people don’t change anything on race day I can tell them I know what I mean since I’m speaking from experience.

Live and learn, there’s always next year.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training