Turtle, Turtle, Turtle...

...or at least that's what I felt like at the Big Lick Triathlon this past Saturday at Smith Mountain Lake in southern Virginia. The race was very nice and well done. The lake and surrounding country side were a nice place to race. There were plenty of fast people but I defenitely wasn't one of them.

I decided to do this race on Tuesday for a couple of reasons. One, as a gauge of how my training was going (easy, base miles with very little swimming) and two, it was off the NCTS radar to keep myself from putting in pressure on my performance.

The wetsuit legal, 75 degree swim went pretty well. I managed to get beat up pretty good on the first leg of the triangle shaped swim and go way off course on the other two legs. Still came out of the water around 22:3x and made the long run to T-1 with several others.

Once on the bike, I had a hard time making the change to a cyclist. I couldn't get my heart rate down through transition and was passed by several guys in the first few miles. I finally got into a rythm on the bike, passed all those guys back and had a decent ride with the exception of getting stung on my right arm by a bumblebee and then having my left aerobar come loose. At least they provided me some distractions.

I got into and out of T-2 pretty quickly, but that's right about when the wheels came off. My legs felt dead and I was low on energy and out of fight. It was a pretty hilly run with most of the first mile going up. I held out hope that I would start feeling better after that first mile. No such luck. I plodded through what I'm pretty sure is my slowest 10k EVER!!

I ended up 22nd overall behind a bunch of young college punks (it was the mid atlantic collegiate championships) and the genetic freak, Chuck Dumke, 3rd OA 1:58.