Two for One

I've participated in two triathlons since my last post.

The first was the Xterra Lake Tahoe Triathlon on August 26, 2011.

It was a very tough 0.92 mile swim, 22 mile mountain bike ride, and 6 mile run.  The weather was fairly warm and very humid.  Here's my story for the event:

• Enjoy a fun and beautiful swim in Lake Tahoe;
• Grind through a fun, scenic, and hard mountain bike ride on the Flume Trail and Tahoe Rim Trail;
• Suffer through a winding, rolling, and interesting run course;
• Finish in 4:08:36.

Due to a combination of being completely destroyed from the Xterra Lake Tahoe Triathlon, additional pressure at work, and illness I didn't do any training for the next two weeks.  Then back to training for two weeks before participating in the Granite Bay Triathlon.

I feel much better about my results at the Granite Bay Triathlon than Xterra Lake Tahoe.  The weather was perfect, a little over cast and slightly cool; and it was nice to have a slightly later start of 9am. The water level in the lake was fairly high, which made for a short run from the water to T1.  In some years, the water is so low that the run from the water to T1 is at least 1/4 mile.

I tried to pace myself to save some energy for the run, and ended up shaving about 5 minutes off my time from last year for a total time of 1:48:15.  Here's a quick comparison of my splits for the last three years:

I ended up 8 of 14 in my age group and 46 of 202 overall.

Next year means a new age group for me!