Saturday, August 5, 2006
This triathlon is held on the beautiful Whidbey Island near Seattle. I like doing this race for the scenery and a nice get-a-way. The island is perfect this time of year. Highs in the low 80's, everything is green. The first time I did this race was in 2002 and have been back ever since. The only draw back is that Seafair (a huge festival with ship tours, air shows, hydroplane races, parades, and street performance...) is the same weekend, so getting to the island can take a while due to the increased traffic.
The race is short, consisting of a ½ mile swim, a 19.5 mile bike with lots of shallow rolling hills, and a flat 3.8 mile run, all shaded with plenty of trees. The course was slightly changed this year due to extremely high levels of blue-green algae in Lone Lake - the previous location for the start of the race. This year the swim was moved to Goss Lake, which, surprisingly, had no effect on the bike course except where you entered the 2 loop course (approximately 1 mile clockwise from the previous entrance).
The air temperature was quit a bit cooler than the last race I competed in this year: around 70°F at the start of the event, but the water temperature was quite a bit warmer at 75°F. With this, I decided no wet suit. I believe this cost me about a minute from last years time due to lack of buoyancy.
Due to the course change, T1 (the swim to bike transition) was a two stage event, similar to Ironman events. First, you dropped of your swim stuff and grabbed your bike gear (helmet, sunglasses etc…) at one location, then you grabbed your bike at another. The bikes were racked on one long rope stretched between two trucks on a gravel road. In order to exit the transition you hade to travel around this long stretch of bikes, up one side and down the other. This is to insure a smooth flow of traffic and force every one to travel the same distance. Unfortunately my bike was one of the first ones near the entrance. This forced me to run with my bike the entire length, both directions. Running with my bike, though, was not what concerned me. It was running bare foot on course gravel for 50 yards that was the most apparent thing on my mind. Ouch!
Entering the bike course in 6th place, I quickly moved up to 2nd where it would take another 20 minutes to catch the first place biker. I then managed to gain another 2 minutes on the leader at T2 allowing me to put it on auto pilot for the run. ...Too much of an auto pilot as I almost made it into the woods with my bike helmet still buckled under my chin. Quickly ripping it off my head and throwing it off to the side, I disappeared through the trees hiding my embarrassment. With a 2 minute lead, I cruised in at a comfortable 6:15 min/mile pace, finishing 1.5 minutes ahead of second place for the win.
In the woman's field, Monika Williams enjoyed a great race with a bit of a struggle in the water -fighting a couple of other swimmers with navigation issues. Making up tone of time, she moved up 9 places on the bike and an additional 11 on the run.
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