Brian Mailo: On the road to Kona and a quick stop at Westchester (1st Place AG 35-39)
Race Report for Westchester Olympic Triathlon, September 23, 2007The Westchester Olympic triathlon was one of my first triathlons. My T1 time for that race (about five or six years ago) was around five minutes. The friend that got me into triathlon in the first place did this race with me and she wondered if I had a picnic in T1. If you consider sitting down on a towel and wiping the sand off each toe then I guess I was guilty as charged. I was hoping to better myT1 and all other times from back then.
Right now I’m preparing for Kona so this was not an “A” race. On the day before the race, aka my taper day, I rode the course in the rain. For anyone who’s ever done this race, you know that the roads are a mess. There are at least four sections that should not be a part of any race. I rode the course with the crew I’d be doing the race with and we managed to follow the directions from the website pretty well (there are a lot of turns) but it was raining so it got increasingly difficult as the directions got wet.
Race Day. I would be doing this race with my girlfriend Brooke, her two brothers and a plate in my shoulder from a collarbone injury I sustained nine weeks ago. More on that in another article I’ll be posting on training for Kona.
The swim start went great. I had the benefit of doing IM Arizona this year where the first half of the swim was directly into the sun, so I had a bit of experience with this sort of thing. My strategy was the Icarus strategy. Basically, just swim towards the sun.
T1 went fairly well but the two trucks adjacent to the bike racks that I’d used as markers were no longer there. Wow, I guess I still am I noob. I finally found my Cervelo after a few…hey there’s a red Cervelo, oh wait, no, there it is, or is that it? Jumped on the bike (I think it was my bike) and I was off.
My goal for the bike was to push it as much as possible while being a bit careful because of the state of the roads. The bad patches were there but I managed to survive. Claire’s climb is a small hill that they have a time trial on during the race, a sort of King of the Mountain. It’s not a bad hill at all, but a few miles before that is a hill that seems to go on forever. A friend of mind went by me on the long hill so from this point on in the race I got progressively less conservative. Competitiveness has a funny way of making me forget that little scar on my right shoulder.
The run. One of TriStar’s coach’s, Dianna Ineman, had me do a speedwork session on Wednesday before the race. And another the Wed before. During the sessions I was doing mile repeats. I was knocking down six minute miles fairly easily so I decided that that was going to be my pace for the run.
The weather was perfect but for some reason I was hitting my splits at 6:10-6:15 per mile with some closer to 6. I was a bit frustrated but it wasn’t a big deal. I just kept pushing the pace. These local races are incredible in that you keep seeing people you know on the course competing and spectating so you get a big boost. My parents, brother and his family and girlfriends family were all there too, which was really cool. They were all near the finish, which made it easier to push the last mile a bit. That's the upside of doing a local race. The downside is the mile markers were off or i can't use my watch. cause i actually ran faster than i thought.
At that point I turned into a spectator. I was cheering on my girlfriend, her brothers (one of whom won the King of the Mountain competition - go Eric!) and even a fellow TriStar athlete, Charlie Bernstein. After everyone finished I wandered back to where the times were posted. This must’ve been a mistake. It said that I was first in my age group. The last time that happened was at a local race in Connecticut and the race director gave me the wrong trophy. I was so happy to get a trophy that I didn’t notice till I got home that the athlete was a woman. Or as I like to say, a guy with long hair. Thankfully, these were plaques, so I had nothing to worry about.
Next stop, Kona.
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