Camp Humphreys Sprint Tri

15 September 2012-

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

 Team RWB Far East Representing at the race

 1st Place for Male 20's and Overall

 The Osan Crew

Camp Humphreys Sprint Tri- AF Still on Top

10 Sep 11-

Sorry this blog is so late, the Army news paper was suppose to do an article on the race but it never came about :(

Well since I have raced the Camp Humphreys race 3 times previously and was undefeated I wanted to make sure I showed up again to keep the winning streak for the Air Force.  I missed the race in June due to being home on leave, but luckily my good friend David Temple was here to keep the streak at least with the Air Force.  It is always fun to go to an Army base and take the title, so even with Kona on the horizon I asked coach to try and fit this in the schedule.  The conversation normally goes something like "Coach I want to race this weekend." Coach- "Ummmm we need a big weekend of training and that doesn't really fit" Me- "Come on coach I like racing, I will do the race and then do whatever else afterwards.".......Then I get the schedule and it has no taper into it, I don't think I have ever been able to taper for a sprint, and then on top of the race there is normally another workout in the afternoon.  So I always get a big training day in and get some good publicity for the Air Force.

We headed down to Humphreys with a big group from Osan, I think we had 15 people total.  I was glad to be going down with a big group as we always have a good time down there.  It is a well run race and they even have timing chips.  They close the roads off to traffic and the course is typically accurate to the distance advertised, which is getting hard to find these days.

Swim- It was nice to get a good feel for where my swim fitness is, and a 400 meter all out swim was a good indication.  I haven't been in the pool near as much as I should of been, but I was pleased with how the swim went.  I was first out of the water in the first wave, but we did not all start at the same time.  It was 16 people and they started down lane to lane one right after the other with about 5 seconds in between each lane.  They didn't want the timing system to get messed up. Time-5:50(1:27per/100m)

Bike- The transition was smooth from the pool to the bike and as I was headed out the second guy out of the water was just coming out of the pool.  I really just wanted to focus on my power and try and get into the 300's, since it was only 20K.  There was a weird wind and it seemed like we were always riding into it and never had a tail wind, even though it was an out and back. Lap 1 I split 15:04, with 283Watts.  Lap 2 I split 14:48, with 280Watts, ahh the numbers and how they are confusing.  And then the course was a half mile long so I had a "3rd Lap"(I had my garmin set to auto lap each 10K) of 1:24.  Time-31:18 (24.7mph/avg-281Watts,Norm Power-289)

Run- This is what I was really excited about.  I have had quite a few brick workouts this year and my legs are really starting to run well off the bike.  They come to me really quick and there isn't a lot of adjustment time like I use to have, it use to take a mile or two before the really started feeling like running legs.  The course has some small rolling hills on it but it is pretty fast in my opinion.  I hit the first mile in 5:48, then 5:57, then closed with a 5:48.  I was really happy with my run, but it was .08 short, so just under the 5K, but I guess that makes up for the "long" bike ;) Time-17:40 (5:51min/mile avg)

Overall Time-56:01/1st Place Age Group/1st Place Overall

I was really pleased with the race and how it went.  A good friend of mine Aaron tried to stack a relay team to beat me, as I was being a little cocky and told him I had never lost the overall race, even to a team.  So we made a bet of some beer and wine and he showed up with a team.  Come to find out after the race, I didn't know what there team name was till they showed me the results, it was "BEAT BRAD WILLIAMS", but somehow the results showed "BEAT READ WILLIAMS", my name gets butchered more and more, IM Korea Kona Qualifying list, IM 70.3 Germany Medical Form, who knows what it will be in Kona.  Anyways Aarons team is the closest that anyone has come to beating me and was withing 2 minutes, it was nice to drink some beers on him that Saturday night ;)

Thanks again for all the support, Kona is 13 days out and I fly out in 5, can't wait to get there and be surrounded by the worlds best triathletes!

Here are some pics from the race:

 

Coming out of the pool

The bike all setup in T1

  

The homestretch and yes I am a heel striker ;)

 

The Finish line, with wave starts you never know if you actually won or not.  However I was the first across the line.

 

The Osan Mulitsport Athletes cleaned house on awards!