Tel Aviv Triathlon - 16 June 2007

I wrote this a week ago, but I haven't had time to post it until now. Enjoy!

Before I even get to the race report, I have to say that this is one of my least favorite races. The course is generally crowded and it's always very hot. The first time I did it, two years ago, it was a nightmare. Last year was better, but still hard. I decided to do it again for a couple of reasons: 1) it's one of the bigger races of the year and 2) for the challenge.

Even after having made the decision to do the race, my mental state going into it was not great. I've been very stressed out due to exam grading and I knew that this time, it was going to be unbearably hot during the run because the starting time for 40+ sprint was 9:00 (an hour later than last year) and the bike course had been lengthened, meaning that it would take longer to get to the run. If you've ever been to Tel Aviv in mid-June, you know why it's really not a smart idea to go running at 10:00 in the morning. On the coolest of June days, that would be about five degrees above unbearably hot and humid. However, the race organizers had decided on the late start time in order to spread out the heats and have fewer people on the course.

Had we actually started at 9:00, it might have been nice. There was a delay in getting permission from the police to start the race in the morning, so all of the heats were delayed. The 40+ sprint started at 9:10. For the first time ever, they decided to have separate starts for the men and women. This was really great for the swim, though it did have a disadvantage that I will get into later. Anyway, the women started at 9:12, two minutes after the men. It was wonderful -- no pushing, no getting beaten up, no nothing. We just got to swim (well, after running a very long distance into the water). So I don't have a good excuse (or even a bad one) for my lousy swim time apart from the fact that I just didn't swim very fast. Enough said. At least I enjoyed myself (apparently a bit too much).

T1 at this race is very long -- a 600 meter run to the transition area. The only part about it that I remember was when we had to run across the sand at the beginning. That was tough. The rest is a complete blank.

I do, unfortunately, remember getting on my bike. After actually being able to find a spot to mount my bike on the very narrow course, I couldn't get my feet clipped into the pedals. This happens sometimes during a race, but today was particularly bad and I was weaving all over the place, praying that no one would ride into me. Once I finally got clipped in, I took off at a nice pace and all was going well until I decided to take my first gel. I reached for my gel flask and got... nothing. It wasn't there. Gone. No gel. I normally take two gels on the bike and this gets me through the run. All I had today was water -- not even a sports drink. Just plain old water on the long course in the hot weather. I was surprisingly calm about this. I was a bit surprised, but I just kind of took it in stride and said to myself, "Ok, I can do this with just water. I just need to drink a lot." Later on, I would see my gel flask lying in the road. I have no idea how or when it fell off my bike.

This was a draft legal race, so I set off to look for someone to work with. Here's where those two minutes that separated the men and women at the start of the race worked to my disadvantage. There was not a single woman on the course (or at least none anywhere near me) that I could work with. I needed a man (and yes, this is legal -- you're allowed to draft off of anyone, regardless of age, sex or even race distance). The fast men were two minutes ahead of me or more. I worked hard to find one and eventually, I did manage to rest a bit while drafting off of other people, but I suspect that these were not ideal partners for me, because every time I tried to take the lead, they would fall back almost immediately. What that says to me is that they weren't as fast as I was and I was wasting precious time drafting off of them. Finally, on the last loop, a group from the up-to-39 sprint (who started half an hour after us -- I was glad to be old today!) passed me and I tagged onto the back of the group and worked with them until the end of the loop. They continued on and I was finished. I'd averaged around 31 kph on the bike, which is very good for me, but I know I could have gone faster if I had been able to find riders closer to my own ability on the course. My bike split was the third best in my age group, only 40 seconds slower (for 25.4 km) than the woman with the fastest split. I should have been at least as fast as she was. If we'd started with the men, I would have been (note that she came out of the water about three minutes ahead of me -- I'll bet she found more people to work with on the bike).

T2 was over way too soon. I was completely freaked out about the run before it even started. It was HOT out, the course was 400 meters longer than other sprint courses here (when you're a lousy runner, 400 meters counts -- believe me!), all I'd had on the bike was water when I'm used to taking gels, I'd barely slept the night before the race and I had bad memories from this run course. This was not destined to be a good run. The only good thing I can say about it is that I ran the whole thing. It was slow and ugly (almost three minutes slower than last year on the same course). This was the first time in a long time that I was unable to pick up the pace before the finish line. I had nothing left.

I finished 7/18 in my age group. I guess the run was hard for other people, too, as I was 8/18 on the run, even with my lousy time. It wasn't hard for the woman who had the fastest run in my age group, though. She finished 5.4 km plus the transition in 23 minutes and change and had the second fastest run split of everyone -- men and women. I would think this was a mistake if she hadn't done the same thing in every race this year. I saw her whiz past me today (she was slower than me on both the swim and the bike). Man is she fast for a 40-year-old woman!

Next year I'm doing the Olympic distance. They started at 6:40 and the bike and run courses were both short. Seriously, I think that it would have been easier for me to do the Oly distance today than it was to do the sprint. It certainly would have been cooler.

That's it for triathlons in the first half of the season. There's supposed to be a "triple super sprint" some time in August, but the date hasn't been set yet. The next "regular" race is in September. That gives me lots of time to work on my running.