Chattahoochee Challenge

This morning we took part in the Chattahoochee Challenge sprint triathlon, a comparatively easy 500-meter swim, 13-mile ride and 5K run.

The swim is in the Chattahoochee River which, today, offered us the most mild current possible. (Our last two races have been in very quiet water. May the trend continue.) Last year this race was in the middle of the wettest summer a lot of people could remember and we raced down the swim course.

Somehow my time was a few seconds slower, though my swim seemed better. Must have been that current.

The ride is through roads and bike paths and Columbus’ scenic river walk. The race and the city block off an entire lane for most of the road portion, which is very nice. It is mostly flat, which is nice. I didn’t have a flat as I did last year, which was even better. My bike time was naturally much better without the flat, but it should have been better.

The run is through the historic and flat downtown Columbus district. It was during that 5K where I wondered about the wisdom of two triathlons in a row. Last weekend’s was longer, and both demonstrated my poor conditioning. I did meet a nice 50-year-old woman who was celebrating her birthday with her second triathlon. She was having a great run just as I was coming to that conclusion. (Happy birthday, Laura!) And, somehow, my run was two minutes faster than last year, too.

It rained before the race. It stopped raining long enough to get in the water. Someone thought aloud “Wouldn’t it be neat if we had a slide start?” and no one disagreed with them.

Someone should have disagreed.

We stood in line to get in the water for about 90 minutes. The first racers had finished their races while we were standing there bored, cooling down, burning off our morning fuel and feeling feet get achy on cement.

If you have the opportunity to do a slide start to a race: don’t.

This is a good race, but if they have this feature next year I’ll skip it.

It started raining again just as I finished my bike. I caught up with The Yankee during the run. Here we are at the finish line:

us

And then it rained some more. Everything we took to the race is wet, which is OK, but it made us proud to have left some dry things in our hotel room, and made that shower even better.

Here’s my bike computer after the race. This is my average speed which isn’t bad considering you have to walk your bike both before and after the ride for safety purposes and I was trying to save something in my legs for the run.

Cateye

I should have pedaled harder. There was nothing in my legs by the end anyway.

As I said: The art, science, skill, talent and philosophy of triathlons is balancing the training and maximizing your minimums. I have no balance and many minimums.

But we had fun. Now we’re going to have ice cream, and rest.

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