Giant Eagle Tri 7/31/11 (Intro and swim)
Aug 28, 08:08 PM
The Giant Eagle Triathlon looked pretty awesome on paper: swim in Alum Creek reservoir, ride down 23 all the way downtown then run a loop downtown for the finish. Despite having a rough time, it definitely lived up to what I was expecting!
The race was on Sunday morning, but things really got started on Saturday afternoon. I drove my bike up to Alum Creek to the swim/bike transition area to drop it off. Since this was a point-to-point race, we’d finish somewhere different than where we started. They gave us bags to put all of our stuff in for before the race starts, coming out of the water and going out on the run. This was my first “big” race like this where we would have bags for our stuff. The last point-to-point I did was in Granville a couple years ago and it wasn’t very well organized. If Kristy hadn’t been able to get my stuff after I got out of the water, It would have just sat there until I came back after the race! Anyway, back to this race. I left the bike there on its own. I thought about putting together my whole transition area, but since there was the possibility of rain, I decided to wait until the morning. After that, I drove the bike course down to the bike/run transition area to drop off my bag there. The first thing I noticed about the route was that there were plenty of potholes, bumps and other stuff that I’d need to be careful about during the race.
The morning started early, very early, 4:15am early. I got up and got ready and drove downtown to park at the finish area. There was going to be a shuttle from downtown up to the starting area that left at 5:30am so I wanted to be ready. It was not even a 30min drive downtown, but I needed time for my stomach to settle before leaving. When I got down there, I had plenty of time to get parked, walk over to the buses and get in a seat. They were school buses so there wasn’t a ton of space in the seats, but it worked. We finally got on the road just after 5:30am and it seemed like it took forever to get back up to the start. About 5min into the drive up I started trying to remember if I had locked the car when I parked. I remembered closing the doors and walking away, but not locking it. I started panicking a bit but finally realized there was nothing I could do about it. I prayed that everything would be ok with it and tried not to worry too much. We finally got up there and got out a little after 6am. The first wave was set to go at 7am so I only had about an hour to get myself ready before they closed transition.
I got my transition area set up with my water bottles and bike, ate a power bar and waited for Kristy to arrive. She was bringing the twins along with our friends Claire and Maureen. I was pretty nervous that they wouldn’t make it in time because the entrance would close at 7am and if they didn’t get in before that, they wouldn’t be able to watch. Thankfully, they got in a little bit before the cutoff.
The race was going to start in waves with the Olympic distance starting first. The sprint distance would start about an hour after the Olympic so I had plenty of time to wait around before I started. This was my first problem of the day. I didn’t think to hold onto any power bars or anything once the race started so I ended up not staying hydrated enough and not having enough nutrition in me before I started.
Finally my wave (men 30-39) was called up and I got ready to start. We would be doing one lap of the course along the beach area. The time got to zero and we were off! I didn’t run into the water too fast, mostly to avoid being in the middle of the other guys in my wave but once I got in I got into my normal breathing/stroke cadence and started off. The first few hundred feet were rough because there were faster swimmers trying to get around me and slower ones I was catching up to and passing. It definitely seemed like there were more swimmers passing me than I was passing, but I wasn’t worried about that. I know I’m not a very fast swimmer but I am decent and if I just stick to my pace and don’t worry about everyone else, I’ll be fine. Once I rounded the last turn and headed back along the beach toward the swim finish, I was surprised how shallow it was. Some guys were standing up and walking parts of it. I could actually touch the bottom with my hands at the bottom of my stroke without trying. It made for an interesting swim.
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