Race Report- 2014 St. Anthony’s Triathlon
About time! As in, about time I finally participated in the race known to kick-off the triathlon season! Also, about time I wrote this race report! This was the year I was ready to finally do St. Anthony’s! The problem? I’m still kind of burnt out from all the crap I did last year. This is the inaugural year for the sprint version of the race, so it was perfect for me to participate in this instead of the olympic distance. I did train for this, but simply didn’t take it that serious. I also ate like crap and pretty much was very lazy…and I loved every minute of it. 😉
This was my first triathlon since November 2013, which aligns with the typical triathlon season here in Florida. The major difference between this year and last is I already had 13 races in the books last year this timeframe (including a Ragnar relay, 6 half marathons, a duathlon, a triathlon, etc, etc.) compared to only 5 races this year! That’s a massive difference and I was in way better shape last year this time! I truly was brunt out!
I was hoping St. A’s would give me that spark to get me going again, but it really didn’t! Maybe the next race will. Either way this was a good race, in fact it was a great race simply from the fact it was the first triathlon for a few of my friends (shout outs to Michelle, Liliya, & Kyle). This alone made the race exciting for me through them. As mentioned this was the first year a sprint was offered with this race and it had some odd distances: 750m swim, 20K bike, & 5K run. Of course for me the swim is all about survival and then turn up on the bike and have a solid run to finish.
The biggest problem with triathlons offering multiple distances within the same race is the open/closing time for transition. It closed at 6:45a for this race yet my wave did not start until 8:30a! Nearly 2 hours of just hanging out! But, the water temperature was measured in at a cool 76 degrees making this swim wetsuit legal! Knowing I wasn’t at a level I wanted to be I took a very conservative approach to the swim, which was dumb! I had a wetsuit, so I should of just went all out. At the end of the swim I felt great mainly because I was putting out maybe 70% effort- oh well. This race had the longest run ever from swim exit to transition entry, ever! I’m talking a damn near 1/4 mile run, on concrete sidewalk!
The bike was great, sort of. Almost zero elevation gain and it was on the streets of St. Pete! With about 2 miles to go I ended up catching up to someone doing the olympic distance and you could tell this might have been their first tri and or at least they were still new to the sport, as they were all over the place on the bike and they nearly crashed into me. This caused me to make an extremely quick evasive move out of the way and I ended up stressing my right calf and it cramped up on me quicker than ever before! It was so bad i actually had to stop, get off the bike, and stretch. Spending the next mile or so on the bike I finally felt I could get going again full speed on the bike, but at that point there was only a mile left.
The second I got off my bike there it went- my calf was in a knot! I ran through it to get my bike on the rack and prep for the run. I was pretty satisfied with my T2 time of only 2:17 while having this issue with my calf. Knowing the run was only a 5K is such a great thing! At this point in my life a 5K is cake! I feel like I could not run a single mile for a year and still pull out a decent 5K time. Which was the case here- a 31 minute 5K was pretty good. It easily took me an entire mile just to get my legs back and to flush out lactic in my calf before I felt like I could get moving.
I ended up finishing in 1:41:35, which sounds horrible for this being a “sprint”, but the swim was almost double and the bike was on the further side of your typical sprint.
I’ll be back St. Anthony’s!
