2009 CGSC/FMWR FT Leavenworth Triathlon

Well last weekend was the CGSC Triathlon, many of you know that I managed to talk Shantel's sister, Mariah, into doing this sprint distance triathlon and have been working with her training for it since mid February. She has been super dedicated to training for this and was really excited. She also liked the fact that her cousin Jaime was doing the race as well.

Friday night Jaime came in with two of her friends who were also doing the race. Mariah and I along with the other girls went to the Fort to get our race packets and look at the course. The ride route had changed from last year and I had made a mistake and had Mariah working on last years ride route and not this years. We checked out the hills on the route and all of the girls were a little hesitant about the new hill that had been added for this years race.

Shantel had a good spaghetti dinner ready for all of us when we got back and after eating we went over everyone's bikes to make sure they were ready for the next morning and checked the weather. Talk was mainly centered on would it rain, how cold was it going to be and that hill is sure going to suck tomorrow.

Race morning the weather turned off almost perfect, temps around the 50's with a little bit of cloud cover and no rain. Here are the pics.

Here's me during T1. I'd forgotten how much I hated the swim portion. I never seem to swim my race, always letting the adrenalin get me going faster or harder than I want to.

This is me about a half mile into the run. It doesn't look like it, but I'm moving out pretty good. This guy and one other are the only two people who passed me on the run. I spent most of the day biking and running by myself. I've been told there was a big group in front of me and a big group behind me. I was just too slow to catch the one in front and too fast for the one behind to catch me.This is my friend Brian and I after we had finished. Brian talked me into doing a triathlon with him when we were lieutenants together in Korea and we've both been racing off and on ever since. Brian is also doing Ironman 70.3 Kansas with me.Here's Mariah after T1 running her bike out of the transition area. Due to the time trial style start in the pool, she started almost 30 minutes after me. Go Mariah Go!

I'd promised Mariah that I would run with her, so here we are after T2 heading out on the run.
Here's Mariah's sprint for the finish. She finished in 1:47 not too bad for her first triathlon. She's convinced now that she wants to at least two more this summer, all shorter sprint distance races.Mariah went back out to catch Jaime and help her finish, here they are going for the finish line.

Over all a pretty good race. I wanted to finish around 1:15 and would have liked to have been pretty close to an hour, but that hill I was talking about earlier really kicked my butt and I ended up at 1:13. Good for 19/46 in my age group 63/134 among the men and 74/238 total. All solid top 50%. Here are mine and Mariah's splits. Distance was 200yd swim/12mi bike/3.1mi run

Overrall DIVPL SexPl Swim T1 Bike T2 RUN Time
James 74 19/46 63/134 4:10 2:38 42:23 1:02 23:41 1:13:55

Mariah 218 1/1 75/90 5:29 3:17 1:06:44 1:06 30:25 1:47:02

Next race for me is the Kansas City Olympic Distance Triathlon on 31 May. This one is a big step up in distances and will give me a good idea of how I'll be able to do at Ironman 70.3 Kansas. Right now for Ironman 70.3 Kansas I'm predicting a 6:15 finish which is well under my goal of 7:30, 31 May will go a long way to solidifying that prediction.