Race reflections and other shizzle

Bank of America, in its infinite wisdom, decided that it would be a cool idea to build a house in 25 hours in celebration of Habitat Charlotte's 25 year anniversary. Admittedly, the only reason I'm sarcastic about it is because I'm completely unexcited to go back to work in 3 hours (it's 11:00 pm) after working a shift from 7am-3:30 pm earlier today. Although, if I were the type of person who consistently saw the glass as half-full and not completely effing empty I'd realize that my two shifts (and the majority of the AmeriCorps and their supervisors...) span what are technically two different work days (Wednesday and Thursday). That makes it sound so much better...

Really though, it's pretty cool to see a Habitat house go up so quickly. The Building on Faith blitz (early September last year, late September this year) is pretty fast but not anywhere close to the speed of this particular build. There are so many tasks going on at once that a lot of times it feels bordering (bordering?) on chaotic. At one point - although I didn't stop to count - there seemed to be at LEAST 60+ people just on that physical construction site. That's not including all of the logistical support people that were scurrying around the tent next door making sure that everyone had a lot of water (it was redonk humid today) and plenty of snacks. Then, in addition to the volunteers there were electrical, plumbing, and HVAC sub-contractors doing their work down inside the house. Plus the insulators, drywall delivery guys, and TV crews and film crews. It all added up to be a huge spectacle. Every body from the neighborhood that drove by rubbernecked like whoa. It was pretty crazy. Everyone was really enthusiastic though, which was nice. Sometimes it's easy to get pretty bored and frustrated when you're surrounded by people who don't seem as though they really want to be there, but all of the volunteers looked really excited and happy to be there working on what is a pretty big-deal build.

The results were finally posted from the tri and in spite of myself I'm mildly to moderately disappointed in my split times. I really think that both runs were long because I'm not as slow as my times suggest.

My splits were (Age group)
(Rank:Run 1 Time:Rank:T1 Time:Rank:Bike Time:Rank:T2 Time: Rank:Run 2 Time)
--1--13:17--2--1:02--2--1:04:30--3--1:05--2--41:25--
(Overall ranks were 11, 11, 20, 28, 7)

The first run was at ~6:15 pace, which is very slow for the HR I was averaging. I technically should have been running about 5:50-5:55s. Even allowing for the fact that it was a race and I was more excited - thereby pushing my HR a little higher than a workout - the run was flat and I should be much faster than 6:15s. The bike time wasn't too bad, as my goal was sub 1:05. I know that I physically could have gone, conservatively, 1.5-2 minutes faster without too much more effort. When I get a tri bike that will knock off another 2 minutes at least I'm sure with no extra physical exertion, which is nice. Not too disappointed with the bike, although it's sad because I used to be faster than this. The 2nd run is what really peeved me. A 41:25 10k is 6:39 pace. That's agonizingly slow. I can run that pace in moderate workouts (as a brick even). I think this course was definitely at least .1 long but still, with a goal of 38-39 for the second run I'm none too pleased with a 41:25. The fact that it was the 7th fastest run of all the males though tells me that it is highly likely that the course was long (although one guy did go 35:30ish on it soooo, that's definitely fast).

Going forward with triathlons/duathlons I know that I'm going to do my best to pretty much do a brick on all of my bike rides. Even just a short, easy run of 30 minutes will help me a ton in the effort to get my legs used to the feeling of running after any type of bike ride. I know that the worst part of the race for me was the first 2-3 minutes on the run, and it was all because I didn't do enough bricks in my training.

Still, after a month to a month and a half of true "tri" training I have to consider this race a success. With super-inconsistent running because of my IT issues it really wasn't too bad. I think my early 2009 season "A" goals will be either the New Orleans 70.3 in early April or the Short Course Duathlon Nationals in Richmond, also in early April. I can't really decide whether I want to "concentrate" on longer or shorter distances so as my feelings/strengths become more clear over the winter I'll decide. Very exciting. Super.