Despite the whole V-day theme and the possibility of witnessing too much PDA, I signed up for the Valentine's Biathlon hosted by Waikiki Swim Club. Yeah, I'm a V-day hater. Since this was my first biathlon, I went in with a game plan of being conservative on the run and going all out in the swim.
Race day morning, instead of eating anything solid, decided to try the liquid diet route. Somehow managed to drink 12oz of Hammer Perpetuem (1 scoop) which was pretty rough, taste wise. Since the race was held at Ala Moana Beach park it took me about 10min to get there.
With the run being my weakness, It felt like almost everyone in the race passed my. Despite this, I stuck to my game plan, and held a brisk pace, maybe 75-80% effort knowing I still had to swim. I noticed a few VFF guys doing the gravel dance on the rough spots which was slightly entertaining. Towards the end, started to pass people who were breathing pretty heavy, all I could think was "shit, the swims going to suck for you". Got to the transition area and tossed the shoes and put the goggles on to get ready for the swim. According to my watch, my 5k time was a 24:48 with an average pace of 8:01. I surprised myself since I've never run anything under 25 min and I wasn't going all out. I had a lot of catching up to do since it seemed like half of the racers were swimming already.
Despite not breathing hard during the run, the swim started out a little rough. I took a few strokes and it was pretty tough to breath. Ugh. Thought to myself "Stupid asthma...still got 900m to go". Err so much for a fast swim. I must have swum breaststroke maybe 25-50m until things got under control. Since Ala Moana is pretty murky, I couldn't really see anyone or find a good draft. Hit the turn around point and BAM, talk about SUN! The sun made it pretty impossible to sight so so I kinda gauged it by following the shoreline. Since I was feeling much better, I decided to go all out on the return. Despite the swim fiasco in the beginning, my watch registered a 19:24. Not my greatest swim time but I was happy with it.
Overall, I managed to place 19th overall (19/130), 5th in the 25-29M age group (5/14). In my age group I was almost the slowest runner (11th) with a time of 24:31.0 but I was the fastest swimmer with a time of 19:37.4 and an overall time of 44:08.4.
I guess my only complaints would be 1) to start the race earlier so the sun doesn't blind anyone and 2) change it to a swim/run format. My speculation is that a runner came up with the format so he/she couldn't lose to the fast swimmers. Haha.
5 comments:
Looks good! And I dunno about a running coming up with it, you'd think most runners want to get the evil swim out of the way and burn down the swimmers on the run.
You had a great run! I am struggle to get under 30 minutes for 5k. I have only done it in the mainland during cool weather. I did 29 minutes at the North Shore Triathlon, but that was only 3 miles. Your overall finish was amazing. Super job!
That's my thinking. It's almost impossible to play catch up to those guys who run 5.5-6min miles.
Thanks. I guess getting injured last year made me realize what was wrong with my form and stuff. It's still bad but not as horrible this time around.
ha, what an interesting event! maybe someone wanted to cool off after their run?
Post a Comment