Tri By Knight

This morning I raced in the Tri By Knight sprint triathlon at Wartburg College in Waverly, IA. It was a big day as my friend, Justin, was racing his first triathlon. Justin and I both arrived at 6:30 am to get our packets picked up and set up transition. It was great having someone to hang out and chat with while waiting for the race to start.

PRThree set up and ready to role

Justin getting things ready for the race

After the close of transition, we headed into the "W" Pool area to line up by expected finish time. The swim was a 300 yard serpentine swim in the pool and it took about 40 minutes before I actually got into the water to start. My swim was not great as I ended with a time of 7:29. I got through transition and out onto the bike pretty quickly. This is the first race that I rode my new Quintana Roo PRThree and everything went very smooth. I managed to log a pace of 19 mph on the bike finishing in 47:14 which was good enough for the 69th fastest bike split out of 248 racers. 

I felt pretty good as I headed out onto the run course. The run course was 3 laps around campus ending with the finish line on the track inside the football stadium. I didn't run super fast but I did keep a consistent pace under 10:00 min/mi. My official time was 1:28:22 finishing 113/248. It isn't often that I finish in the top 50% of racers at a triathlon so I am super proud of this finish today. I raced very well and knocked off the rust from a long off season. I felt very comfortable on the new bike and am looking forward to seeing what I can do on it at the Quad Cities Triathlon next month.

Official Result

Proud Finishers

For now, my focus is back on the grueling half Ironman training schedule. In fact, after the 2 1/2 hour drive home I headed back out on the bike for a 2 hour training ride. I am 6 weeks in and have 10 weeks to go but I'm already seeing some good results. In 6 weeks I will be racing at the Quad Cities Triathlon as my final warm up before Door County. I had a horrible race at the QC race last year so I will be looking for some redemption there this year.