Competed in my 10th sprint triathlon of the season today. Two more on the schedule.
Local hero and tri-store owner Nick Lehecka took 1st place overall, beating out last year's winner by 2 seconds. Nick trains 20-25 hours a week, and often leads lake swims or group bikes for the 'Big Dog' triathletes, particularly the young bucks in the area.
I missed last year's Skinny. I'd registered, though I felt lousy the morning of the event. Got into town, where I was picking up a friend to spectate. By the time I arrived at his place, I was feeling really queasy. I sent him in, turned around, and made it home. Walking into the house food poisoning caught up with me. I spent the day alternately sleeping and vomiting.
Today's results were much better. I actually made it to the race and competed. While my own finish is no where near Nick's stellar performance, I was happy: I knocked over a minute off my '08 swim time and about a minute and a half off the bike. The run - as usual - slow. I've got to fix this hip problem! And train for running!
So I'm pretty happy. One irritation: I came into T2 to find someone had racked their bike where mine was supposed to go. I had to yank the usurper out of my spot and leave it on the grass. The bikes were not well numbered. Had they been, I'd have mentioned it to an official.
The food was pretty lousy, too -- stale bagels and dried out fruit that had been left out for flies to land. While a local restaurant was supplying pizza, there were insufficient amounts for the hordes of starving athletes.
The weather held! Hurricane Earl is galloping up the east coast, so the day, which started out clear and cool, turned windy and overcast. It didn't start to rain until the run, however. There was another shower as I was leaving transition, which soaked all of us -- next time, pack a slicker.
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