For this race I had a feeling I'd have a good shot at PR'ing the swim and bike. But I had no idea I'd PR the swim by that much (2-min)! From 13:20 last year to 11:16 this year. The bike was a challenge as expected but it seemed that I took for granted those first two big climbs in the beginning of the bike course at the expense of focusing on the fun fast steep descents towards the end of the course. It was a grind going up those first 2 climbs. I've already made the adjustment, in that next time I do this race I will do some hill training (hill repeats). The fact that the hills were a challenge supports the specificity principle in fitness. In short, it's specific adaptations to imposed demands (SAID). Being fit is one thing, but I was more flat terrain fit for this race, not necessarily hill terrain fit, which goes back to SAID. But that can all change based on training (imposed demands). That said, I still managed to get a solid bike effort and Pr'ed on that too with an 18.9 mph average compared to my 18.3 mph average from last year. It was awesome to hit 38.6 mph on that second hill descent coming back. The key in the swim was sighting enough along with relaxing into the swim. I literally closed my eyes for a few seconds during the race and envisioned swimming in my gym pool to collect myself and not make the open water swim bigger than it was. And it seemed to work as I started remembering the fundamentals of reaching long, pulling strong and trying to keep my head low when breathing (1 goggle in the water) along with being streamlined to the surface of the water. Overall, it was a great day for this race, which happened to be rescheduled from July 13 to August 11 due to hurricane barry. And they changed the start time to 6:30 am I suppose to avoid any further inclement weather chances. On the bike, initially I made the mistake of staying on a higher gear while climbing. But fortunately, toward the back half stretch of the course I remembered the basic fundamentals of cadence and moved towards a lower gear and I was able to climb better and faster with a higher cadence. And it spared my legs better too. Overall, a great race! Very beautiful park and area.
