The Sylvania Olympic triathlon is a great event! It is very well
organized and the course is nice and fast. This year it happened to be a world qualifier as well as nationals qualifier and the championship race for triathlon clubs in the mid east area. The competition was huge this year! There were people there from all over the country. I was racked next to a woman from Texas who had come with some others hoping to qualify for worlds. She had a fancy bike with a rear disk wheel and ran in a pair of Newton shoes. She ended up getting second woman over all! I don't know if she got her worlds spot because the first woman was in her age group.

My goal for the swim was under 30:00. I was out of the water in 28:11 but crossed the timing mats up in transition in 29:30. I was happy with that considering it was not a wetsuit swim. It was good practice for Hawaii. I drafted off people quite a bit. My goggles got fogged up and I couldn't see the buoys so I trusted the people in front of me and just followed and didn't sight too much. My transition was 1:58. I am just not very quick. It is something I need to work on.

The first mile of the bike was congested but soon I was up to
speed. My plan was to not drop below 20mph. For me this was possible since the course is pretty fast and flat. There was one section that was windy. I stayed aero the most of the time except for a few turns. I passed a fair amount of people. My bike was 1:11:49 average 20.8mph. I was happy to be back to transition and it shows in my slow 1:55 transition time!

My run was good! I felt good the whole way. I passed more people. Again the course was not very challenging. I saw my friend Leslie on an out and back portion and yelled out to her. I was hoping to catch up with her but it didn't happen. My goal was to stay under 8:00 miles. Every mile was marked and I certainly hit my goal. My run was 48:16 with a 7:47 pace. I felt strong the whole way! I guess training on hills and racing on a flat course helped.

I ended up with 4th place out of 14 in my age group. The women who beat me were from MI, IL and NJ. A time of 2:20:xx won my age group. My time was 2:33:26 which was 6 minutes faster than the Olympic tri I did in June. I was pleased with my time improvement. It was a great day! Next weekend is a 1.5 mile open water swim race! Oh and I need to start getting longer distance bikes and runs in now! Oh and I better have good news from my doctor next week because I feel good!

Jane