NomadVW 

Over the weekend, two lady friends and I participated in a sprint triathlon as a team. Lady friend #1 did the swim, I did the bike, and lady friend #2 did the run. (1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run).

We were pretty convinced we were going to win the team division when the race started. Our swimmer can do the 1600m in the pool in 22minutes (long time competitive swimmer), I'm the most active American cyclist in the area right now - I was expecting 1hr 10min for the 40k, and our runner does 4-5 marathons a year and expected to run the 10k in around 43 minutes.

Two starts: men's division at 9:00am, teams, women, and senior division at 9:03am. The weather was very windy and the water was super choppy. The other nearly competitive team to us has the local swim coach as their swimmer and he came out of the water 5th (remember, he started 3 minutes behind the main men's division). But... wooo. Our female swimmer came out of the water 7th, 1 minute behind the closest team (she was the first female swimmer out of the water too!). I hopped on the bike 1 minute behind the lead team and was the 7th cyclist on the road.

Off i took and I was able to catch the other team's cyclist before half of the first of 4, 10km laps. The wind was absolutely brutal at about 10-12kts out of the north. After the first lap I had passed two cyclists and pulled into the fifth spot. On lap two I somehow had the presence of mind to hit the lap button on the HRM to get a gauge of LTHR and pushed on. I knew I was moving along at a pretty good clip - mostly around 40kph. There were two horribly slow 180 degree turns about halfway each lap right before you turned into the headwind, which really blew because you had to regain all of your momentum in a straight-on headwind.

I rolled across the line at 1:05:38, avg speed of 37.1kph. I tagged my running team mate for her to start off. I'd gapped the nearest team competition by 8 minutes by the end of the 4 laps. What floored me most I didn't find out until a few minutes after I regained my senses. I'd passed all but one of the cyclists who had come in ahead of me. The only one that I didn't pass was the guy who eventually won the overall triathlon (for the 5th year running). He's a world class triathlete that competes all over Japan. I had gained about 1 minute on him though and when the day was done, I had the fastest 40km of the day.

Now, granted - I didn't have to swim 1.5km before getting on the bike, so all this is taken with a grain of salt. But it sure gave me a confidence boost going into two more weekends of racing before the season ends. 140km road race this Sunday and a 2hour criterium on a formula one track on the 9th.

We did eventually win the team competition overall. We placed seventh in the overall standings, at 2hrs 15 minutes for the overall event. The closest team to us was 10 minutes back on their finish (which meant our runner STILL but 2 more minutes between us and the team closest to us.)

We're pretty stoked here. My LBS sponsors the event so I got a towel, a pair of bike gloves and trophy for the bookshelf. I'm sure my wife will move it to the office soon enough.

NomadVW 

Don't understand....... ?

Edited to say... maybe the question mark on the subject confused you. It was more of a "second race of sorts" since it wasn't really a pure bike race, but it certainly felt like it to me. YMMV.

VW

Grasschopper

Does this count as a 3 way?

ok sorry...I am a sicko. Congrats on the great bike section.

merlinextraligh

What kind of elevation change on the bike leg?

NomadVW 

Practically none. It was laps around the perimeter of the airfield. There was about 10 meters of climbing per lap, I'd guess.

branman1986

congrats! sounds like a great time, and way to go on your bike leg!