Race Report - Cache Valley Classic

The Cache Valley Classic was this past weekend, and here's a short report on it. I take much longer notes about what went right/wrong, but this is this short version.

Pre-Race Night Before:
- drive to Logan went nice. One of the reasons I wanted to do this race was to see what this valley was all about. Beautiful area. Easy driving; people actually drive the speed limit! Easy directions to get to the campground, where the swim was.
- Pulled into campsite. The guy next to us has a 6.5kw(!) generator running. That's enough power to run most homes! Loud as hell. But he has every right to use it, so I don't say anything. Paul had alot of fun setting up camp, and he's quite the little helper. He also loved running around the park area.
- Check out transition area and swim area. Looks very well organized. There's a quarter mile run from the beach to the transition area, but that will be nice to warm up the legs coming out of the water. Rains off and on; we hope it stops for the race.
- Within an hour, all of our ears hurt from the generator. Quiet hours don't start til 10pm. We get in the car and drive around, hoping Paul will go to sleep and to get away from the generator noise.
- Generator quits at 10:02pm. Finally! Paul finally goes to sleep. Raining. We all get to sleep shortly after 10.
- 12:43am: Paul wakes up. He's not happy without being held while Mom is standing up. There will be no laying down for this little guy for the next two hours. I stay up while Tera holds Paul. Miserable two hours til he gets back in his bed.

Race-Day
0530: Up and at 'em. No rain. Feeling suprisingly fresh for missing two hours sleep in the middle of the night.
Setup my bag, go to local gas station to get a double of coffee. Setup transition.
- Transition area is really nice. We had assigned spots! Unbelievably nice grass with lots of room for our stuff. This is going to be a good race. Still no rain.
0730: Wetsuit on. Warmup about 300meters. Water is nice and cool. I feel good.
0755: Race brief. Water temp is 57.8. Standard temp at the races I do in the mountains around here.
0800: "Open" wave goes off. These are the studs and the guys who screwed up their entry and put themselves in the wrong group.

Swim:
0805: Male and female olympic wave goes. It's a two-looper triangle course.
- I go out too fast, faster than I really wanted to. At 300 meters I start looking for someone to draft off. Where is everybody? Oh, they're 50 meters behind me. That's great, right? Not exactly. My chest is thumping and I'm starting to feel the wetsuit crush my chest and the swim cap crush my skull. Panic coming on, but I chill a bit and it goes away. Back to swimming.
- at 500m and the second buouy, I find my groove. Long and strong pulls, snapping the hip. Life is good.
- 750m, still going good.
-1,000m, hands are starting to freeze. Another panic coming on, I get on my back. My backstroke is suprisingly fast today, and I stay there for about 50m.
- 1,2500m, Hands frozen into claw position now, very hard to get a good grip on the water. I can't kick because my feet cramp immediately if I do kick. I'm about 30m behind the lead as far as I can tell and in a small pack around me.  Time to push in, some water sloshes in my face mask and screws up my contact. Gotta stop to fix that or it will be a long day with one contact; it's very hard to lightly mess with my contact in my eye with frozen hands and treading water, but it works out.
- 1,500m: done in 26minutes and some seconds. Very slow, but in the front. Results show #5out of the water in my wave, with a 14-19 year old male and a 14-19 year old female beating me by several minutes (!).

T1: Shoes on at the mat, and I'm off and running to the bike. The run here went well. T1 was slow, and I went into the race not worrying about transistion times because it was cold (mid-40's) and I was going to need a few dry layers (new shirt, socks). Five minutes for T1! Oh well....

Bike: it's a fast bike course, but today was very windy on the front half of the loop we did twice. I was nearly blown off the bike by a heavy crosswind. Just kept my head down and went. My bike computer showed cadence but not speed, which was probably better for me anyway. Back half of the loop was very fast and protected from the wind, but that meant we didn't get the tailwind after fighting a headwind. A couple of s-turns had me practicing my handling skills that I had read up on but not practiced. Those went much better than expected on wet roads. But it still wasn't raining, so life is good. Finished the bike in 1:14, which I'm considering quite fast for me given the conditions. #19 of 45 olympic, so still right at that 40% mark overall.

T2: in and out. no real issues.

Run: Still no rain. Legs very tired out of the transition. I hadn't done any bricks since March, when I was on the bike trainer followed by a 3-mile run most mornings. I was paying for it, now, and the bike had taken alot out of me. There's a large hill right after the dam at mile .75 or so, but I attacked it as planned, although slower than expected.  Then a nice cruise out to the turnaround on flat roads. At this point, I'm running hard but fairly slow for me, but I'm still having a good time, I guess. Halfway at 22:15 or so. Coming back I started to feel my feet that were previously frozen, and my hamstrings thawed out now, so I could stretch a bit and pick up the pace. Well... I picked up the effort but the pace remained the same. At mile 4, I passed a guy in my age group that had flown by me on the bike...turned out to be the pass to get me third in age group.  Running 7:45/mile or so until mile 5.5 when I crashed into a 9minute mile to finish. A small hill on the final half mile hurt physically and mentally.  Finished the run in 47:XX, #19 of 45 overall in the run.

I was happy with my overall effort and results, although they were nowhere close to my goal times, which got obliterated by the weather. I met my goals relative to everyone else, though. Most importantly, I liked the race and gave a great effort; I was most pleased with the bike portion because that's a good time for me in any weather compared to last year. I put alot of effort into improving the bike over the winter, and it appears to have paid off. This would be an AWESOME race on a nice sunny day with no wind; it's a beautiful area, the race is well-organized, friendly people everywhere, and very spectator/family friendly.

This Saturday is the Janet Clarkson Memorial Triathlon in Hebgen Lake near West Yellowstone, MT. This is an annual race for me, and I really like the small feel of it. It grew alot last year, and it might grow some more this year, but it still feels really small. Water temp is currently maxing at 54deg, and forecast is partly cloudy, mid-60's for a high, and 30% chance of storms. Hopefully it remains a triathlon with the swim, and it past years the water has warmed up alot in the week before the race, same as it is doing this year. Normally, this is Yellowstone fishing trip with a triathlon, but with the rivers in the park still raging from the melt, it might be a hiking weekend with a triathlon.