Exceeding Expectations

I completed my first triathlon on Sunday.  It was the Harvest Moon Half Ironman here in Aurora, CO.  I decided to start with a half ironman distance because I needed a triathlon that was long enough for me to make up time on the bike and run for my poor swimming.  In the end, I think that this strategy worked out pretty well.  My goal was to finish the race in 6 hours.  My stretch goal was to finish in 5:30.  When I started the race I thought that I'd probably finish in 5:40 or so, if everything went really well.  My actual finish time was 5:09:48.  I was 13th out of 35 competitors in my age group and 99th out of about 400 compeitors total in the triathlon.

For you tri folks out there, here's the stats:
1.2 mile Swim: 48:30 (375th place)  Yuck, but what I expected.
T1: 2:27
56 mile Bike: 2:43:14 (124th place) This is a 20.5 mph average.  Not bad for a very hilly course.
T2: 1:16
13.1 mile Run: 1:34:23 (31st place) This is a 7:13 min/mile pace.

I couldn't be happier with how I performed.  I trained a lot for this and the race really went well.  My swim time was pretty poor, but I finished it, which was my goal, and even after biking 56 miles hard I was able to run a boston marathon qualifing pace for the half marathon in very hot conditions.

I can't help thinking about how much better I could do though.  If I could shave 15 minutes off my swim time and bring my bike speed up 2 miles per hour, I could have finished in 6th place for my age group with a time of 4:40.  Of course, the winner in my age group finished in 4:12 with a swim of 29 minutes, bike speed of 24.8 mph and run pace of 6:34 min/mile.  I just don't see myself ever getting that fast.  Oh well.

Next goal, sub 3 hour boston marathon in April 2011 and then maybe another half ironman in the summer.  After that, maybe, just maybe, a full ironman in 2012.  We'll see.  It is a lot of training, but after this I feel pretty confident that I could do it.

-Jake