Mesa Sprint Triathlon

Mesa, Arizona

Since Lori and the kids are in Indiana this weekend, I decided to do back to back triathlons. The great part is that both of them are right here close to home. I could have walked to this one. This is inaugural event. The course basically circles the Gateway airport. The swim took place in the ASU East campus pool. I was frustrated with the swim because we weren’t allowed to pass given we were swimming down both sides of one lane. We lined up according to swim times, but some people had inflated estimations of their abilites. I was breast stroking half swim. We were allowed to pass on the wall, but that wasn’t enough. The time I lost in the pool hurts as you will see later when I get to results. I could not have asked for a better bike course for my cycling strengths. The run course was unique and took us out into nowhere. I actually like the course because it was different. We run through some dirt fields and into some ditches. There were no hills. I did not get any company until mile 2 of the run. I got passed by two guys in my age group. There was no way I was going to be able to keep pace with them though, they were flying past me. I ran hard and my 5K time ended up being only 11 seconds slower than my best 5k ever. That is pretty good considering my best 5k was run fresh and not after racing a bike course. The bike does not seem to be slowing my running anymore. I seem to run pretty close to how I run fresh now days. I hope that holds true in Austin. The two guys who passed me in my age group ended up being 2nd and 3rd over-all, which placed me in 2nd place in my age division. That can be a great thing about age division 40-44. Although it is always the most competitive and fastest division, the over-all winners are often pulled from our division. In this race that elevated me from 4th to 2nd. I missed 1st place by 2 seconds. That is why the swim is so hard for me to swallow. I lost a good 45 seconds in the pool. I enjoyed this race and hope to do it in the future. There are a few Things that could be easily improved about this race however. The first would be not to put the transition area in a swampy field. Mud gets in your bike shoes can make clipping in and out more difficult, which is also a safety issue. The race advertised that the bike course would be swept the night before and it was. The actual road was beautiful, so I assume the sweeper was out there the night before. The Problem is that the sweeper did not understand the concept and swept all the debris into the bike lane, so whatever they paid him was money wasted. The bike lane probably would have been cleaner had he not swept.