Back on Track

I did the Tejas Triathlon on Sunday, and I had pretty low expectations coming up to the event because of lack of sleep and missed training. It just goes to show you that you should make the most you have on the day of the race. For the first time in "I can't remember how long" I had a tri race where I didn't "screw up, blow up or throw up." Despite the heat, I put in 1:10:32, which was good for 49th place in my age group - the top half! (It's been almost two decades since that's happened).

I felt good and managed to a 173 average heart rate with a max recorded HR of 187. So what does that mean? I was at 92% of my max HR for over an hour. No wonder I'm happy. The actual data from a race also puts the lie on MaxHR = 220- your age, because that would make me 33. My recovery still took 5 minutes or so to drop below 130.

The moment that made the difference for me was my "smart swim." Let's just say it involved cutting the tangents to the buoys and a clever application of rule 4.2 and leave it at that. So I raced smart and hard and had a great day.