Westfield Wave Race Recap

The last few months have been beyond busy and I still can't believe how quickly they have gone by. One minute I am venturing to ride outside and the next minute Syracuse is here which means Lake Placid is only 4 weeks away!!

 I have been putting in as much time as I can with training while still balancing the responsibilities of home ownership and a career which has more than its fair share of action over the last 8 weeks. It isn't always easy, however when things are put into perspective and I am reminded of sacrifices made on my behalf, it gets my butt out of bed and into the pool or onto my bike. This is the first season in which I have waited until June to race. I typically complete the Sheriff Sprint Tri in April just to get the cobwebs off. This year, with Lake Placid being the big focus and really the only thing that matters, I only raced when it was appropriate and the first round came at the Cyclonauts very own Wave Triathlon.

 The Westfield Wave is a .3 swim, 13 bike, and 3 mile run that our club puts on to benefit the Westfield YMCA Swim Team. This was my first year racing it and my first time testing out my new Lazer Tardiz aero helmet. Keeping with tradition, I dubbed this race my speedo race for the year and raced in my custom thatrunnerchick.com speedo in order to promote my friend Courtney's blog (check it out) I was really looking forward to this race because it was so short and you get to put the pedal to the metal the entire time. 

When the gun went off I sprinted towards the front of the pack only to find someone to my left that was just ahead of me. Instead of letting my ego get the best of me I decided to be smart and tucked in right behind him to draft off of him. It worked for 2/3s of the swim until I swallowed some water and he opened a small gap. By the time we hit T1 I was able to catch up to him and we exited T1 at nearly the same time. The cool thing about this race is there was a motorcycle escort for the lead biker and I was determined to take full advantage of that. I got my feet in my pedals and and proceeded to step on it! The bike course has a few little rollers for the first half of the loop (which you do twice) and has a pretty nice downhill and flat back stretch to end the loop. I pushed up the hills and pushed harder on the downs and flats. My goal was to try and break 30 minutes for the 13 mile bike. After lap 1 I was just under 16 minutes. Because it is a two loop course and the second lap is more congested the motorcycle pulled off after lap one. I continued to go all out really seeing why kind of top end speed and power I still had after training solely for the long/steady/aerobic race that is Ironman. At the end of the second lap I pulled into T2 with a time just over 30 minutes and a pretty solid lead heading into the run. 

As I left T2 I was greeted by my teammate Jill who was the run leader escort on her mountain bike. Because of recent computer issues I was running this leg without a watch and totally on feel. The 3 mile run is an out and back which allows you to see whos behind you and how far back they are at the turn around. The run is essentially 1.5 miles up a couple of rollers and 1.5 miles back down. As I made my way back I saw that I had a pretty solid lead on Scott Green (local guy that was in second) and Jill shouted the lead was about .8 miles. Right after Scott came Jimmy and Ochoa both moving along very well. As I made the turn into the park I was able to see the race clock from about 300 feet away and was hoping it would say 58 or 59 minutes. Much to my surprise (and liking) it said 55 minutes! I pushed hard all the way through the finish and then shut it down.

 It felt awesome to push as hard as possible and race the run portion purely on feel. In the end I got the overall win with Jimmy getting 3rd and Ochoa getting 4th. My next opportunity to race would be Syracuse in 2 weeks which means Placid is only 6 weeks away. Syracuse Race Report coming soon...

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