Brewhouse Triathlon Race Report
Race Day: Saturday, August 7, 2016 – 8:30am
I went in to Brewhouse Tri with big expectations. I had the expectation to win. It’s easy to say you have no expectations, but this was not the case. It’s easy to say you have no expectations when there is no reason that you should have them, such as not swimming and signing up for a triathlon, which involves swimming. Or letting my tri bike literally get dusty from no use, when the race involves riding a tri bike. Nevertheless, I went out to Brewhouse with the goal to win. Time was irrelevant.
This was my sixth time racing the Brewhouse Sprint, and I was competing for my fifth win. The caveat was my severe lack of specific training. This seems to be a common theme lately, but seemed to play out OK with Voyageur just one week prior. I hadn’t swam a stroke or sat on my tri bike, for all intents and purposes, for nearly 11 months. I knew I had good run fitness, and I knew I had decent biking fitness from biking to work every day. Is 6 miles a day enough? I rarely push it… my commute is at a very leisurely pace. How far back on the swim will I be? I had some major questions on how the day would pan out.
The morning drive to beautiful Island Lake outside of Duluth confirmed my notions that the day would be ideal for a triathlon. I got to the transition area and saw plenty of familiar faces to who I had to explain being off the grid and spending my time hiking. It was good to be back schmoozing with the awesome triathlon community in Duluth.
The bike warmup was on point, and I didn’t spend too much time running. I had a pre-race Mountain Dew and was ready to rock. My transition area seemed so much more compact and easy than I remember. A testament to the backpacker ‘less is more’ mentality? Perhaps. I suited up in my wetsuit and did a few strokes. They felt fine, but even a minute was enough to feel the tension and soreness in my shoulders. Not good.
I found myself antsy for the race to begin. Before long, Matt Evans came out of nowhere to instruct us on what buoys to turn at and to come back to. In a flash, the goggles went on and the 10-second countdown began. “GO!” and the hectic start commenced. Nothing like a triathlon start… Hands, feet, faces, bodies everywhere.
I felt fine right away, but definitely noticed my lack of swim fitness. I was used to pulling away from people at the drop of a hat, er, swim cap, and now people were swimming away from me. I tried to get on someone’s feet, but it was only for a short while. The first buoy wasn’t too terribly far off, and I felt good rounding the first and second markers. My shoulders were burning and they felt like wet noodles dragging through the water, but I was halfway done and still swimming as strong as a non-training fool like me could go. I took it all the way in until my fingers scraped on the bottom of the lake floor.
I knew I had some ground to make up while I was in T2. Not to belittle my fellow athletes, but I was not used to being down off the swim. My transition was hasty, it took me a bit to get my shoes set, but then I took off hard on the bicycle.
The Brewhouse bike course is fast. I cranked right out of the gate and got up to speed quickly, passing a few people in the process. I was gaining on others quickly and passed them like they were stopped with a kickstand up. I peeked at my watch to get a reading of 30MPH, and I knew I was on the right track. I figured that I could hold a decent run pace regardless of how hard I push on the bike. At that moment, I knew to achieve my goal, I’d have to put it all on the line on the bike. And so I cranked away. Every person I passed, I looked ahead to hopefully catch the lead motorcycle. The legs were feeling fine, but I was breathing really heavily. No time to catch my breath, I thought. A few more people, and I saw the leaders near the one turn on the course. He was just a few minutes ahead of me, so I made the 180-degree turn and had my sights focused to that motorcycle like a track dog to the fake rabbit.
The next few people were slower to pass. It took a while to reel them in, and it was a slow pass. I was happy to get past my tri buddy Lee Brown, because I knew he’d be a contender. He’s had a few second-place finishes at the race and I knew he was hungry for a local win with his new tri bike. A minute later, I caught the leader, with time to pad until T2. I made an effort to put more time on my fellow competitors, and hopped off my bike in a hurry, sprinting for my running shoes.
The second transition was speedy, and I was off. I wondered how my legs would feel without doing a single brick workout on the year, and they felt like jelly. The feeling of running in a triathlon is pretty terrible. It’s like you have a parachute on, or ankle weights. You just can’t get that speedy pickup. I was breathing heavy out of the gate, and took a peek behind my shoulder to gauge how this guy was running. He was close. I figured I’d be able to pick up a little speed once my legs get used to the switch-up, but three miles isn’t much real estate. In that case, I tried to focus on my cadence.
By the turnaround, I couldn’t see anyone. By the time I had a clear view behind me, back on County Road 4, there was nobody in sight and I knew I had it. I picked up my pace for good measure, and just because I could, and my notions were confirmed as the athletes going the other way told me it was mine. They popped us into the woods, and I was cruising on by on a wooden bridge. Sweet. The last half mile was on a trail, and you could just smell the Northwoods pines. The sound of the crushed gravel underfoot made it a treat for the senses.
I held up my five fingers on the finishing chute, and brought it in a few seconds past an hour, far off of the course record. To my surprise, Lee Brown came waltzing in before I could bat an eye. I somehow held him off with a big bike, giving me five wins for this race. The Brewhouse Sprint Tri is a spectacular event.
Race Stats:
Place: 1/204
Time: 1:00:34
Swim: 13:36
Pace: 1:40/100 yd
Bike: 28:13
Speed: 26.4mph
Run: 17:21
Pace: 5:36
Shoes: Mizuno Hitogami size 11
Bike: Specialized Transition
Wheels: Profile Design 78
Food: Water
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