Saturday, June 20, 2009

XTerra Triathlon

A first for the Ogden family:

We camped the night before on the shores of Lake Wellington, where the Tri would occur the next day...

My Tri was first... 1/2 mi swim, 10 mi MTB ride, 2.5 mi Run... that's my good friend and training partner Matt, behind me...


The thrash was insane. All I learned about swimming while training in a pool went right out the window for the first 5 minutes or so. Then I found some space and my groove and started getting exited that I wasn't going to die...

I finished in a little under 19 mins, beating my 20 min goal... somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The MTB ride was great. Just barely avoided a nasty crash where I'm pretty sure someone's neck got run over. But, I made up some good time finishing just over 1 hr 3 mins... probably just eeking into the front third of the ride times for my age group...

After the 3 mile uphill stretch at the end of the bike ride, combined with not enough liquids, the run started with a mile of pretty steep uphill. And my legs started cramping really bad... I tried to catch some water in my mouth from some roadside kids that were squirting squirtguns at the competitors, but it just didn't do the trick. Fortunately, my legs didn't ever come to a dead stop, like they felt they would, and I actually surprised myself with a 22 min (and change) finishing time, breaking my goal of 25 minutes.
(note: I think if you look closely at my left quad you can see it contorting and deforming from the cramps)

Overall... my time was 1 hr 49 mins and something like 50 seconds. I think that landed me right around the 1/3rd mark for my age/gender division, and probably about middle of the pack for all men. But, I made or beat my personal goals for each segment and overall, so I was stoked.

Now this is cool... after the adults, they had kids' tris. Max and Cass entered the 11-14 yr old division. Swimming 100 meters, bike 2.5 mi, run 1 mi...

See em? (Cassidy is right behind Max) Can you tell who our more competitive kid is?

Here's Max RACING out of the transition area (he did very well, we think he came in 2nd in his age division)...

And Cassidy finishing up the run...

Amazing experience... we'll be back there next year, trying to improve our scores.