Chattahoochee Challenge Race Report- 2013

ATC Contigent of the Chattahoochee Challenge

I hadn’t done a triathlon this small before. Though they had said three hundred were registered, I’m thinking all of them didn’t show up because it seemed smaller than that. It was very casual. You got to choose your own transition spot, too, which I thought was neat since I nabbed a good one!  Also, it seemed weird to know so few folks.. there was Ted, Rick and I plus Rich Heidal, Christian,  and Robert Murphy who were racing with Team in Training. Besides them, though I barely knew anyone out on the course. 

The Swim

You could see the current moving pretty quickly.  The flip side is that you got to go downstream for awhile then had to go three quarters of the way back up. I got out pretty strong and there was one decent looking drafting possibility from my wave. I barely touched her toe like twice and she actually stopped to give me the stink eye. Figured that meant she wasn’t likely to be a good long-term drafting candidate anyways, so I just moved on. 

Felt smooth and pretty good overall, despite having to wear the full sleeve.  I have been swimming a lot more this year. Don’t think I’ve really gotten any faster, but I must say I feel better. I actually enjoyed the swim and felt confident. Saved some juice for the turnaround so I could get over to the side and out of the current more for the upstream part of the swim. The water was definitely still flowing but it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t have a watch on me at this point, but I could tell that it wasn’t as fast as last years swim supposedly was, the perceived time felt about like a normal half swim.  I did end up beating Ted’s swim by 7 seconds, thankfully keeping my streak alive of beating him in races even though I can’t beat him in the pool.  

Really long, extended run to get to the transition. Was feeling a little cold but the temperature ended up a non-factor as I knew it would. Grabbed arm warmers but didn’t even put them all the way on and was off. I was kind of lazy I didn’t even both with clipping shoes in… I was relatively close to the exit so I figured it didn’t matter much and it was one more thing to go wrong the first race of the year. 

The Bike

Got going and the temps had really messed with my power meter. I needed to re-zero because of the wide swing in temps but it didn’t occur to me until about twenty minutes in. So I spent the first twenty just trying to get the power up and thinking wow, the swim must have Really taken it out of me. Finally thought about it logically and realized I needed to re-zero. Then I was able to get right on target. 

So something I knew about last year was that Paul said it was easy to get off course and in fact, he himself had gone off course a good bit. Prior to this years I had that in the back of my mind but I figured I wouldn’t be in a situation where there wasn’t someone I could follow. Obviously I didn’t think it through (or study the course very well) because it was much different than I pictured. The first several miles were on a path like the silver comet, except for really windy and with lots of wind debris on it (logs and such) there were also lots of little intersections, segues, onto roads and back. Basically, much more technical and hard to navigate and with no one else around.. you know where this is going. At one point I got on a nice flat road, and I’m thinking, this must be the road we were traveling to and now we will stay on that road. With that mindset I missed one of the little direction signs that basically served as 80% of our directional cues and just like that I was off course. I went about a mile and saw a chain link fence blocking a gravel road. Now I knew that wasn’t right. Thank goodness the fence was there otherwise who knows how long I would have kept riding down that road! I had to stop, get my bearings and head back the way I came. 

At that point I had to mentally reevaluate and remind myself of my goals. I wanted a solid effort and  a benchmark of where I’m at, no need to stress about a lost 5 or 6 minutes.  I had an aggressive power goal and a conservative run pace goal. Then back to hit the last couple weeks of TX training hard.That’s it. I could still meet both of those goals even if I lost the chance for a PR.  Got back on track and it was a lonely and windy ride. I had to pay really close attention to the signs to make sure it didn’t happen again and my shoulder started spasming from the unfamiliar position. Got to the turnaround and it had been so windy and slow to that point I was expecting a tailwind on the way back. No such luck.. the headwind on the way back was very surprising and I was slated to have ..I’ll have to check but I think my slowest half time.. coupled with my best power average ever! To put it in perspective I averaged ~15 watts higher than Macon last year and had the same time. Very strange just because I was expecting the course to be really fast. 

The last few miles I finally saw some other folks. Saw Rick and ended up going back and forth with him (legally, of course) There were several of us at one point and I was so happy just not to have to look for the directions for once. So I was basically blindly following the guy in front of me. Well suddenly I was on grass, then gravel , then dirt, then mud. We were off roading on our TT bikes! Not sure if he just misread a sign or what but that’ s the second time I went off course.  Thank goodness no one went down as three more folks behind me blindly followed US into the woods.

Finally, we were nearing the end and I started picking it up, missed a sign again and went off course Again! Fortunately, a police officer who was sitting in his car nearby honked at me so this time was only a minor detour. Very frustrating, though!

To keep from getting totally frustrated, I had to remind myself about fifty more times that I was here to have fun and enjoy myself. In the spirit of having fun, I proceeded to forget any sort of nutrition or electrolytes for the run. I actually didn’t care that much, normally I am happy to live off the course, save for the fact that I didn’t think they would have any caffeine. 

The Run

I was running strong, but in full on fun mode for the run waving to folks, cheering on people, and asking for directions as I was paranoid about going the wrong way again. A couple folks had said I was in first place and I didn’t see any challengers, so I figured I’d better enjoy it as who knows if it would ever happen again! I put away the Garmin, because I knew if I looked at it I wouldn’t be able to help but obsess about pace and kill myself trying to get every last possible second. Instead, I enjoyed running by feel and watching everyone else’s races unfold. 

I saw some fast guys who had started in front of me and I couldn’t tell if Ted was in front or not. I saw Kate a Tnt-er who comes to EL running strong, but I thought I had heard she was in a relay. I also saw Robert and Rick, both looking good, and Rich, who was farther back than I expected. (Turns out he had a bike mechanical)
           
Running without a watch does have its downsides. With no real mile markers the finish came up sooner than I expected and suddenly I was done. Certainly that has never happened before (normally the last couple of miles stretch on forever) I crossed and felt great! (I have definitely never said that before either!) It was really fun getting the opportunity to lead the race, and I thought the whole thing was very quaint. There was a really neat finish festival going on after and the whole scene reminded me somewhat of Chattanooga. I think it would be fun to get a big group for this race. The time of year probably kills it as a half in April is likely more than most folks want to take on.

I thought it was really neat experience that Ted and I had both won overall for ATC.  Rick put up a really good performance too.. he actually started in the wrong wave so his time is wrong, FYI. He was faster than recorded, although we’re not sure by how much. (Don’t tell him I told you that, as he didn’t want to make a big deal about it) Also, new ATCer, Rich had a heroic race, he actually had a mechanical and ended up having to carry his bike back to transition. Tough guy award for sure! All in all, a fun day, and as always happens after you get that first race under your belt, I feel ready and excited to race again!