Monday 8 June 2015

2015 U.S. Armed Forces Triathlon Championships – Leon’s Triathlon


Cdn Armed Forces High Performance Triathlon Team

I am extremely fortunate this year to be racing on the CF High Performance Triathlon Team as a Development Athlete. We have an amazing group of athletes, with potential and a vast knowledge of experience. As a result I had the amazing opportunity to take part in the U.S. Armed Forces Championships on the 7 June at Leon’s Triathlon in Hammond, IN. What an amazing experience it was!

The U.S. Armed Forces Championships is a draft legal Olympic triathlon which is also the U.S. selection race for the 2015 World Military Games.  So this was my first draft legal Olympic race. Going into the race I knew I’d need a good swim or perhaps more importantly come out with a group of athletes.

Swim
Going into the race I knew I needed to come out of the swim with at least a small group to give me a chance on the bike. I was able to find a good set of feet after the first couple hundred meters and then I just held on for the remainder of the fifteen hundred meter swim. I could have perhaps gone a touch faster but I was putting in a hard effort to stay with the small group. I was extremely happy to be exciting the water with three marines. My time wasn’t great at 23:36 but so be it…I was with a small pack!
Practice Swim Complete: (L to R) Phil, me, Eric, and Dave S.

Bike
Despite being excited coming out of T1…my excitement quickly turned to disbelief as I managed to be the first of our group out of transition but stumbled as I climbed onto my Argon 18 Gallium Pro. I subsequently dropped my bike, my right shoe came off the bike, I put it on, climbed back onto the bike, only to realize that I dropped my chain. By the time I was back on the bike the three U.S. Marines were already two or three hundred meters up the road. Ok, I though no need to panic put a big hard effort in and see what happens….we’ll that gap never closed. Left in no man’s land with no real pack behind me and without the power required to bridge the gap in front I was left to a solo effort for four 10-kilometer loops. The result 40 km solo efforts in a draft legal triathlon…that sucks! 1:04:37

Transition Setup
Run
Well despite my hard solo effort on the bike I was still optimistic that I might be able to turn in a respectable run. The downpour of rain and the high winds made sure that that you couldn’t overheat on the run. I settled into a solid effort and slowly reeled in a few of my fellow competitors. Despite the hard effort on the bike I still managed to hold on and run a 37:33.

Overall
An ok race, a great experience, and hopefully this’ll motivate me to work harder on my swim. Final position 29th in a time of 2:06:46. The greatest news of the day was hearing the Alex BoulĂ© one of my team mates had stormed his way to 2nd place Overall (thanks to a monster effort by Marc Prudhomme on the bike) and Phil Reynolds had ran himself into 7th place!

As an added bonus this weekend we got to meet Brian Mansker the genius behind the T1 Pro Race Belt. If you are looking to save a few seconds in transition that you've got to check this out!