Disney Olympic Tri

I had a pretty good race at the Disney Olympic tri - 3:47:21. Yes, nearly four hours for an olympic... that's partly because the bike leg was 58K instead of 40K. I finished 66th out of 141 in my age group, which for me is a great result - above median!

I drove down yesterday with Diana. We checked in, picked up our packets, racked our bikes, and then went to meet up with the tri group for dinner. Diana split a cabin in the Fort Wilderness campgrounds with some others, while I opted for the luxury of my own room at Fort Wilderness Lodge. I thought I would see how it is staying on Disney property the night before, rather than have to drive down at 4:00 am to get there in time. Overall impression: while the room was nice, it isn't worth $180 to not drive down again. It is pricey, and for that the check-out time is still 11 am, so if you are in the event and not staying another day, you can't even get a shower afterwards! Bah.

My swim went as usual, 40:36 for the 106th in my age group. Someday I'm gonna really try to improve my swim.

The bike leg was an extra 18K as I mentioned, and it went pretty well. I did 1:56:58 over the distance, 85th in my age group. For me that was a good result, since I averaged 18.8 mph.

The run was OK, hot and humid, exactly what to expect in Florida. My Garmin apparently had major problems getting a good GPS signal, since the route it captured is literally all over the place. Despite the map, I assure you the run didn't take us back into the middle of the lake. My run time was 1:01:21, decent in the conditions. What I'm really happy about is that fairly slow run time was 29th in my age group. So no matter how crappy I felt on the run, more than a 100 of my immediate competitors felt and did even worse. :)

The tri season is winding down, my next event will be a relay, where I am doing the swim. A friend of a friend put together a team for the Florida Challenge, a half ironman in a few weeks. Their swimmer backed out so they were looking for another, just so they could participate. I find it funny that as slow a swimmer as I am, there is a team that was happy to have me join them for the swim leg!