New Jersey Devilman

The winter was murder.  Just as my conditioning was coming back in early February, I sprained my ankle.  Snow, snow and more snow kept me inside, and travel, travel, travel limited training time.  It wasn't until mid-March that training moved outside and running began again.  I had a pretty good April, mileage wise, and actually got outside on the bike twice, but still it was a cold and dreary April.  I did not anticipate this when I signed up for the New Jersey Devilman tri.  In early May, there have usually been a fair number of warm days to warm up the water . . . Not this year.

The race is a long sprint. .4 mile swim, 20.5 bike, 4 mile run.  I went into it thinking of it as a long hard workout rather than a race.  These things always change on race day, but with tris the wave format makes it hard to do anything other than race with yourself.

The weather was as nice as you could ask for.  Cool at the start and warming up into the 70s by the end.  I had a good day.  The swim was a mess.  Lack of open water practice showed.  I went out fine, but heart started racing rounding the first buoy, so I had to flip over on my back.  It happened again as I got to the second buoy.  Ugh!! Then, as usual, I settled down and finished it out.  There were still a few bikes in the rack when I came through the ungodly long transition, but not many.  As usual, I made up time on the bike. I finished the 20.5 mile course in 1:00.42 seconds.  So I maintained a 20 mph, including time lost in transition.  No complaints there. The run was fine.  Once I got through the sluggishness of transition, I settled into an 8:15-8:20 pace.  The official time has me running a bit slower than that over the course, 35.38, or just under 9 minute pace.  Not sure where the discrepancy came from -- measurement, or just slowness out of transition. Anyway, the end result was that I finished right in the middle of the pack, 6 out of 15 in my age group, and a minute faster than my fastest time for the course.  Luckily, I made up what I lost on the swim on the bike.  All in all a good day.  It's good to be racing again.