BFAST #2 report...Ironman Coeur d'Alene less than 1 week!

This past Saturday was the second Beaches Fine Arts Series Triathlon...this is a sprint triathlon event, so not really suited to the Ironman training I've been doing. My Cervelo P3 and race wheels were on their way to IM CDA without me...so the night before I put some clip on bars on the Trek Madone road bike, borrowed some really fast wheels from Double D, rode it up and down the street then called it good.

The swim was much calmer this time around...but was actually a little long. It's hard to get swim courses exactly the correct length, especially at smaller races. My swim went pretty well, besides having to clear my goggles twice on the way out...I didn't have the straps tight enough as I dolphin dived into the surf. The issue with starting in the second wave, is catching all the slower swimmers from the prior wave. I had to swim over and around guys doing the back stroke, breast stroke, and swimming sideways...jeesh! I think I was second or third out of the water in my wave.

Once on the bike I set out trying to gain back some time. At the turn around, I saw that the top 3-4 guys were all packed up...and "taking advantage of the 7 meter rule"...which is tri-speak for "I was drafting...but didn't get caught". For some reason I went faster than last month by a few seconds, even on a road bike with clip on bars that I hadn't ridden in forever. The top 3-4 guys all went over 1 min faster...hmmm, wonder why :-)

As I was rolling into the T2 I saw several guys leaving, and one of them was Justin Jacobs. He's won several of these sprint series triathlons in the past, and is a 15 min 5k runner...so I knew this would be a problem. Well, he put a bunch of time into me on the run and I ended up 2nd overall by 31 seconds...ouch. Always the "brides maid"...and never the "bride". My run at the shorter distance is pretty slow right now considering my Ironman training...so, maybe with a little more speed work...who knows? Next time.

Here are the results from BFAST #2.

I leave on Wednesday for Coeur d'Alene. It looks like race day temperature could either be high 80's or mid-low 70's and raining...we'll see as it gets closer. The low temperature has been in the low 50's, and the water is in the high 50's...kind of chilly for a Florida boy!

Sween