High Cliff 2005

Summary:
What is IMOO going to feel like? “Mommy, I’m scared.”
OA: 34th
AG: 7th
Time: 4:41:41

Pre-Race:
Being that this was my first half, I was pretty nervous. The wife and I stayed at the Fairfield by the mall in Appleton. Spent the evening before putting a bike computer on her bike, mixing sports drink, and shaving my head.

The wake up call came pretty damn early at 4:00, but it didn’t occur to me to think that it was to early. Saw somebody else packing up their car in the parking lot as I was loading up. Setting up the transition area wasn’t a big deal.

Swim:
We all walked over to the marina entrance. I was in wave three. The start was a sort of deep water type start. Everybody wandered down the boat ramp and treaded water behind two buoys. Since I figured I’d probably be one of the faster swimmers in my wave I lined up at the line. Then I spent the next couple minutes floating around, and just as we were about to start, suddenly I was like four people back from the front. “What the f**k is this s**t?” I thought to myself.

The RD does her, take your marks, go bit, and away we go. Figuring I’d have some fun with the jerks who cut in front of my, I proceeded to swim right over the top of two of them, and the third tried to thrash his way around the marina to keep up with me. After about 30 seconds I had dropped him.

The rest of the swim was pretty eventful, accidentally swam up on a few people that I didn’t see as I caught up to the first two waves. When I made the turn around for home, I knew already that the course was going to be really short. But I just kept chugging along, got closer to shore and started brushing the bottom as I was swimming so I got up and started to run in. Then it got deep again, so i returned to swimming.

I finally got into the mat, and my watches split was 13:30 (Thinking okay how in the world did I miss 800 meters?), but somehow the final results put my swim at 14:22 (my wife’s was a minute slower then her watch spilt too), anyways it was fast enough to get a couple people in the crowd to say “Holy cow, he started in the third wave”.

Offical: 0:14:22 (1st OA/1st AG)

T1: Was smooth. I had no issues with it. 0:1:44

Bike:
To start off with, I had several people I train with occasionally tell me that, “You’ll love this course, it’s flat.” No way was that a flat couse, if you want my opinion it was pretty much relentless rollers. Didn’t have much recollection on the bike except for a guy on a blue Griffin bike. Man, that guy could climb hills. Me and another guy on a P3 would blow by him on the downhills and flats, but then an uphill would come and he would jsut smoke us, it was insane. I think the bike was about 1.75 miles on the long side, although looking at their web site it was advertised as a 56.7 mile course, so that would put it at a mile long. Not that big a deal I guess.

Fitness wise the bike was a piece of cake, however I can tell I haven’t pushed that much intensity in my training, my quads were screaming the whole way.

2:41:16 (75 OA/ 13 AG)

Run:
I cruised up the big (big) hill out of Transition. I had no problems with it, I can tell that my bike fitness was pretty good, I didn’t so much as feel any pain, or experience any problems transitioning to running.

My mile split at the first mile was 8:00, which I figured was pretty good for having to run up a big hill, and then the rest of it in a trail. Well mile two was about 6:00, 3 – 7:00, 4 – 6:00, 5 – 11:54. So I came to the conclusion that the mile markers were not out accurately.

Other then that it was a pretty good run, I started to really suffer (I was considering retirement from Triathlons after this race at one point) at about 6.5 miles, but I survived the rest of the way. Since it was a two loop course I was able to compare splits, and it doesn’t look like I feel off to much.

I think the run course was accurate in overall length, but just poorly measured for the markers.

1:42:59 (OA 36/AG 9)

Race Overall –

I enjoyed this race a lot. From an organization and execution standpoint, I think it was done really well. From a course layout/planning perspective, it was poor: Very short swim, tad long bike, and a very mismarked run course…