Green Mountain Triathlon Race Report

I raced the Green Mtn triathlon yesterday (5/4/08)in the Rutland area and got my first victory of the season! This was a low key pool triathlon put on at Green Mtn College by the adventure program students. It was very well organized and had great volunteers as well---thanks guys. Lindsay and I did this race back in 2002 but the course was different this year. Lindsay by the way decided to train this weekend instead of race as her masters program had dug into some of her training time over the last couple of weeks. The weather this past weekend had been pretty bad---cold and rainy. I almost didn't do the race. I was at the end of a recovery week so the timing was perfect to get in a race specific workout. I'm about 2 weeks out from the Florida 70.3 (half ironman). 2 weeks out from a half iron is excellent timing to get in some sharpening from a high intensity effort. When I got to the race site and checked in I saw a friend/competitor Paul Fronhofer from Ney York. Paul and I have raced together several times and we duke it out pretty closely on the bike. He is a very strong cyclist posting one of the fastest bike splits last year at Ironman Lake Placid. I think he went around 5:10 or so. Anyhow I greeted him and said "so we're gonna duke it today eh?" He said he was only doing the swim and bike because he had a fracture in his foot and can't run right now. I hope he heals up well. He mentioned a guy named Pat O'keefe would be here who won Lake George triathlon last year. Paul said Pat would swim about a 5 min 500 yard swim, wow that is crazy fast. Pat apparently was a division I swimmer in college. He was second out the water last year Ironman Lake Placid with a 47 min swim!!! Sick! I was actually relieved though that there were some strong guys here to really race it with. The head to head compettion is one of the things I love about this sport and I was going to get a chance as Paul, Pat and I would start near each other on the swim. The faster swimmers went last and each person had their own lane and there was maybe 50 or so people total and only 5 lanes. We were able to start the race around 10:40 or so. Paul ended up starting a few minutes ahead of me but Pat and I got to start at the same time which I was psyched about as he was my key competition on the day (but I was also competing with Paul on the swim and bike). We start and Pat is absolutely flying 2 lanes down from me. I think he lapped me once. I knew the lap counters were off when I hit the 250yard point and they didn't put in the half way card, they did on the next 50. I wasn't too happy about this but just shook it off. I hit 500 per my count at 6:20 but did the extra 50 anyway. I got out in 7:00. I knew this was off because all winter I was hitting 6:30 and 6:40s for 500 splits in my 800 time trials. Pat had gone around 5:10 or so and I needed to chase hard. Once on the bike my legs felt amazing---Jesse those BST sets on the bike are incredible. I have never felt so powerful on the bike. Mentally I was trying to keep it together as I let an additional 40 seconds go on Pat by doing that extra 50. I was going so hard on the bike but still not seeing anyone ahead of me. I just kept telling myself to recognize how good my legs feel and keep pushing as hard as I can. Finally I saw some people in the distance. I kept pulling them back and eventually passing them it was Pat and one other person. Awesome but then I realized Pat's twin brother was here racing too(no kidding) and I was hoping it was acutally Pat (it was). I caught him around mile 12 or so and had another 6 miles to keep putting time into him. Once on the run I couldn't belieive how good my run legs felt---I felt like a gazelle. I was absolutely flying faster than I've ever run off the bike. I hit the first mile in about 5:30!! I felt great. My coach is a genius!!! Once we got the results I had figured that Paul Fronhofer had beaten my bike split but it turned out that I outsplit him by 20 seconds!!! I couldn't believe it. The race was very well organized for this type of event. Nice job to everyone who raced!!! There were lots of people doing their first triathlon. I love seeing this and feel so humbled by their courage to take on a new challenge.


Here's the stats

1st overall
swim 6:20 / 500 yards
bike 48:31 / 18.5 or so miles
run 18:05 (on my watch)