I was really looking forward to this race as I have done it 4 times previously. I convinced my coach to let me race and he made sure I paid for it in terms of making sure that I didn't rest for the race and then stacked up some good workouts with the race as well. I wanted to see where I had improved since last year so figured this race was a good place to do it at. Same course the past 3 times gives a good gauge of my fitness. I hadn't raced any other of the same courses as years past this year, actually this was only my 3rd tri of the season.
I showed up a little late and wasn't able to get my typical 1-2 mile warmup run and short swim. I got in the water for a few mins just to get use to the water and made sure I knew where the mark was for a good flip turn. The weather was about as good as it gets in terms of temps, but the winds are always a little weird at Humphreys. Luckily I had my HED JET6 on the front so wasn't too worried about the wind, but my buddy Dan had a Zipp 1080 up front and he was a little worried, after the race he was talking about getting blown around quite a bit.
Swim- 400LCM (50m pool)
I had a good swim and felt good coming out of the water. I had really been putting in some solid time in the pool and really felt good coming into the race. I was happy to confirm my swim fitness with a mid 5min swim, not great but good for me. No one took my split but by estimation of my other times and total time I estimated a 5:20 to 5:30 swim time.
Bike- 20K (2 10K loops)
I came out of the water in the lead, as I was in the first of 5 waves. I wanted to hammer the bike really hard and see how my legs felt running off a all out effort. For some reason my legs didn't come around right away and I was quite disappointed with my power output for the ride. I still set a bike PR on the course and was happy with my time, but it just took a while for the legs to come around. I opened up the gap to Dan, who ended up 2nd, and I knew he would be one of the guys to watch for. With the race being wave start it is really hard to gauge where everyone is, but we try to get all the "fast" guys in the first wave so we can race heads up. It worked out well and we got most of us in the first wave and second wave.
Run- 5K (Out and Back)
With the limited running in the early season my run has been the one thing I have been worried about.. It has slowly been coming around, but wasn't sure where my short course speed stood. I had a decent run at Armed Forces but hadn't ran a hard 5K in a while. I ended up running a few seconds slower than last year but felt very good with my run. I didn't see Dan for quite a while, I had already hit the turn around and was about 800m back down the road. I still pushed hard on the way back and wanted to see how my time compared to last year.
Overall Time- 53:11
Swim- 5:30
Bike- 29:15 Strava Link: http://app.strava.com/activities/21222094
Run- 17:58 Strava Link: http://app.strava.com/activities/21223614
Sept 2011 -56:01
Swim-5:50
Bike- 31:18
Run- 17:42
Overall I was really happy with how the race went. I lost a little on the run but smashed the bike compared to last year. I think my other place of improvement was my transitions. The other thing that I was really happy about was the amount of people that came down from Osan and how great of a showing we had. It is always fun to go down to the Army base and have a bunch of AF people take the top spots. I am sad that this will be my last race in Korea for quite some time, but I am sure I will find myself out there sooner than later to race again.
Here are some pics from the race:
Outrunning the storm, that never showed up
Finishing the run
1st Place for Male 20's and Overall
The Osan Crew
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