BACC Triathlon

My wife and I participated in the BACC triathlon today which included a 1/4 mile swim, a 12 mile bike ride and a 5K run. The swim went well, but the bike and run sections were the held in snowy conditions. The winds were so powerful that they could bring a bike to a stop if you didn't pedal on a downhill. Bob Peterson was last year's winner and finished first again by a small margin. Mark Bittner nearly edged him out. I finished about 8 minutes back for third. This shows how much a lack of winter training really hurts early season. . .especially on the bike. It was my first real triathlon and went well. I wonder if snow is part of the forecast for next year's race? My time was 1:17:19. My swim time was 7:30. The bike time was 46:51. The 5K run time was 22:58.

Osceola Healthy Heart 5K

The Osceola Healthy Heart 5K was a great run. I took off fast and finished the first mile at about 5:50, which was about where I wanted to be. I held the lead for the first mile, and then was caught by Joel Ailts of Deer Park. He was a good competitor as he pushed me and we kept pace for a while, but he eventually gapped me going up a hill. He maintained a lead, but I was able to stick it out and finish about 13 seconds behind him. I finished second overall, but had my best 5k time ever with a time of 18:32. I ran a cool down run with Joel. I guess Joel does quite a few runs as well. I was real happy with my run. Luckily, the weather held off. It was cloudy and looked like rain, but nothing turned up with the weather.

Spring Fever 2 mile

My first race of the year was in Altoona. I just decided to try a race the day before. I had only been running for about 3 weeks. Since I wasn't doing Grandma's marathon this year, I decided to take winter off and focus on biking. It was pretty rough going. I went down with a friend of mine to the race. He did the 6 mile. I ran the 2 mile. By the one mile point, the guy who won the 6 mile race (Corey Stelljes) was already about 30 seconds ahead of me and I was only running a 1/3 his distance. Well, he did just run the Olympic trials for the marathon last November. . .he isn't too bad a runner. I finished easily ahead of the next place guy with a 40 second lead. My time was 12:15. I got done and thought, gee. . .that was a short run. I am not used to running only a couple of miles. Usually I am slugging out long distance runs.