Race Coverage

"It All Made Sense"...

Friday, 14 October 2016 23:10

By Brad Mitchell (obsessivetripulsive.weebly.com - 9/8/16)

Des Moines Olympic Race Report - Six days a week. 51 weeks a year. Lots of miles. Lots of hard intervals. On Sunday it all made sense.
I have come a long way in four years from beginning as a non-runner, cyclist or swimmer. On Sunday I raced a 2:10:21 olympic distance race and a few things stood out;

*Beat a male pro's bike split and came within 20 seconds of another two
*Beat three male pro's run splits (* including TJ Tollakson. He did have knee surgery 9 weeks ago, but when you can average 27.8mph on the bike in the same race, you must be feeling pretty good!)
*Won my 40-44 age-group, was 9th overall amateur and first over 40 year old.
*I did this with a very slow swim (I see that as a positive moving forward)
*I LOVE to race. This distance is the ultimate challenge for me - hard out like a sprint but twice as long....

2016 has been a huge turning point having Matt Hanson as my coach. It always felt as if every minute of training had a purpose.  No junk miles, no over-training and no getting bored. Challenges every day. Matt asked me the night before the race how I was feeling. I told him that I had never felt so prepared for a race. This was my A race and the race that would set the bar for how I would approach training and racing for 2017 - I just wanted to get going.

SWIM 27.51 (1:42 100/yds)
This swim had a bit of everything. There was about a half mile walk from transition to the swim start. Nate Sanders and I had a yarn on the way over and watched Coach Matt and the pros start with Ashley, Matt's wife, who was also racing  It was a really good 13 strong men's pro field but a very disappointing sized 3 female pro field. The race paid 5 deep so two female pros could have turned up and got paid to just finish. It was my favorite time-trial start format and I started at the back of my wave. There was a sharp right turn at the first buoy and then in a couple of hundred yards I could see competitors standing up and walking for 25 or so yards!  It looked like The Walking Dead with swim caps.(see swim map below - the shallow bit was at the bottom of that land mass that looks like Italy) I followed a good line to the next buoy but as my hands scraped the bottom, I stood up and walked a bit. The last turn buoy was the beginning of a very long final stretch with a green final turn buoy and a big inflatable Gatorade bottle which made for great sighting. Although I was not swimming fast, that last line definitely improved my swim ranking. I'm not sure if most people could not see the final buoy or they thought that the guide markers were a compulsory line or they were following a sight impaired athlete but to my left I could see the folks taking a very parabolic journey to the swim-out. This swim felt good and there is much hope going into the offseason. READ MORE