The KCCC Triathlon Report

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there!  

This weekend the Kansas City Corporate Challenge continued with the Triathlon/Duathlon events at Shawnee Mission Park.  A very popular event it would appear as the parking lot and transition was completely full. I like the venue for a triathlon.  The bike course is a little hilly that favors the stronger cyclist.  Run course is also on the hilly side the way they run it with a nice climb once you cross the dam.  If you are a strong runner this course will favor you. 

Today's race was a training race form me. In all honesty I shouldn't have raced.  The last week I have been nursing a groin injury that I sustained last weekend at the Camp Cole Hare Scrambles. If it was not for representing my company in the KCCC I would have taken the weekend off and rested. 

Not much time spent this year in the pool.  Today's swim would mark only the 4th time in the water.  With only a 500 meter swim how bad could it be?

They made us swim from the Marina parking lot/transition area over to the Swim Beach for the start.  After that short swim I can now say I swam 5 time this year.  Water temps were 76 so a wetsuit was not needed.  They were allowed none the less, but my Xterra suit I got last year is way too small for me.  Well, I guess it did not shrink so to be correct I am just to large for it.  I tried it on Friday night and I looked like a whale with fat pushing out of the sides of the suit. Not a pretty picture. 

For the swim they lined up everyone and two participants took off into the water at a time. I kind of liked that format as you did not have to worry about the mass start swim frenzy and all the kicking that is usually is involved.

With my groin strain I took it easy on the swim with my kicking.  This caused me to have very poor body position in the water.  I started to kick a little stronger after a few minutes, but I felt a good deal of pain in my groin and for some reason I got a cramp in my foot.  At least I was able to continue swimming continuously.  I saw a number of people resting on swim buoys and getting assistance from the life guards.  I came up on one gentleman that had started 5 min ahead of me that had a red swim cap.  He was swimming the breast stroke only on his back.  After that I figured I was doing o.k. albeit slow.

 Not a good swim time for me, but with only a handful of pool swims did I expect a better time than 10:44?  Well yes I did.  I should have easily been in the 9 min range even with no swim training.  Just goes to show you how much body position means in swimming.  My time was 74th overall out of 218 males. 

T1 time was 1:35 which included the long run up from the lake.  28th overall T1 time out of 218 males so not bad. My poor "baby feet" as Carolynn calls them were killing me by the time I was done.  I need to toughen those boys up for sure.  I was sad to see the carpet end as we exited the water. 

As I mentioned above the bike course is a little hilly with one long climb after you crossed the dam.  Not a hard climb but if you are not ready for it you will be surprised that you are hurting bad at the top.  Once you got on top of the course is was almost down hill back to the transition area with only three short punchy climbs to tackle. I had two laps of this course.  The biggest challenge was navigating the hundreds of cyclist on the course. All types were out today including a hand cyclist.  It was nice to see so many people participate in one of my favorite sports.   I never passed so many riders in my life. The majority of them really needed to raise their saddle height.  I felt sorry for all of them as they seemed to be suffering on the climbs.  Considering I only put out a mildly hard effort on the bike I was happy with my time of 23 min.  This was good enough for a 22.8 MPH average and 10th fastest bike split of the day.

T2 transition was good also.  45 seconds for this one.  I felt good coming off the bike, but once I started to run my groin pain started back hard.  I had a few good sections of the run where I was able to pick up the pace but overall it was basically a fast jogging pace. Still I was able to pass a lot of runners which is unusual for me. 

The final mile of the race sucked.  I started getting passed and my groin was starting to really hurt.  I almost started to walk it in, but with all the people lining the course I just couldn't :-)  I finished up with a run time of 26 minutes for the 3.2 mile course.  Like I said it was just a jogging pace for many, but it was what I had in me today.   I need to take a few weeks off and heal up my groin before I continue on with any more running.

In checking the results it looks like I placed in the points paying positions for my company and earned a bronze medal in the Male 45- 49 division.  We will have to see the final results for confirmation.  Not a bad day for a training race.  I may have to sign up for the Shawnee Mission Triathlon to redeem myself on the swim and run courses.