My first triathlon of the season was Piranha Sport’s New Jersey Devilman Half Lite 50. I had heard good things about the race, and the fact that it was relatively nearby made it a no-brainer that this would be a good way to start the season. The Half Lite 50 is comprised of three non-traditional lengths that come out close to 50 miles in total. The race starts with a 0.8 mile swim, followed by a 40.3 mile bike and then an 8.8 mile run; it’s longer than an Olympic race but shorter than a half Ironman.
After my logistics coordinator (Joan) pointed out that this race wasn’t as close as I thought, I decided to splurge and spend the night before the race in a hotel a few miles away. My room was $45, and the hotel was attached to a 24-hours Denny’s, so this was an easy choice to make. There were a few other triathletes staying there, which was reassuring. I liked knowing I wasn’t the only one who valued not getting up a 3:30 in the morning in order to drive a few hours and then race hard before returning home.
The next morning I made it to the race site without incident, despite the incorrect directions provided in the athlete guide. Being one of the first ones there allowed me to check in quickly. It also allowed me plenty of time to set up my transition area. Most races allow previous day packet pickup, which helps to alleviate the morning-of rush. This race didn’t, so getting there early was certainly advantageous. There’s nothing worse for pre-race jitters than having to rush through the transition set up and then sprint over to the race start. I know people who have missed, or have come close to missing, the starts of everything from small, local sprint races to full Ironman races. With only an hour before race start, the check-in line was still hundreds of people long, but all I had to do was get into my wetsuit and head to the lake.
Quite a few people have asked me how the race was, but given the odd distance it’s hard to make an immediate assessment. Since this was the first race of the season and not the “A” race that I’m training for, I was really just approaching it as a long training session. To compare it where I left off last year I’ll have to break it down by the numbers.
The Swim
There’s an adage that says never to try out anything new on race day. While this should hold true for the most important races, sometimes you have treat a race like a training session. Given that it’s still early May and there are a lack of open water swim opportunities in general, I was trying two new things out. The first was wearing a full sleeve wetsuit. I wore a sleeveless one last year, but due to high water temperatures in some of my races, I only got to wear it while competing in the Delaware Diamond Triathlon (DDT). The second change was swimming with my Garmin 310XT. I was using its multisport mode, which allows you to track your total time including transitions through the entire race.
The swim start was much more organized than the DDT race, which is also produced by Piranha. The course was two laps around a 0.4 mile course marked by four buoys. The swim is renowned as one of the dirtiest, murkiest, muddiest endeavors around. Visibility is zero. I seeded myself in the back to help reduce the chances of getting run over by faster swimmers. Even with the extra precautions, the first few hundred meters of the swim were generally a full contact event. It wasn’t until I rounded the second buoy that I decided it was best to swing out a bit wide and find some clean water - as in “no-one-around-me water”. Once I got out there, I settled into my stroke and could see that I was moving quicker than the others about 25’ to my left. I held this strategy on the straightaways, but the turns were always congested, especially with multiple waves of competitors starting at different times.
I wasn’t the first out, but I know I didn’t labor as much as I did in the DDT. I glanced at my Garmin on the way out of the water and saw that my time was about 22 minutes to complete the 0.8 mile course. The half Iron swim in the DDT is 1.2 miles long, and it took me 47:30. Assuming I could hold the same pace for another lap, I would be on track for about 33 minute 1.2 mile swim. That’s a 14.5 minute drop from last year – a 30% reduction. My position in the race was greatly bolstered by this as well. In the DDT my swim split ranked 215 of 236. In the Devilman I ranked 186 of 293. Not great compared to field, but a big improvement on the personal level.
While the weather conditions were better this year, and I was in a full suit, it would be hard to attribute the change in time to those two variables alone. I would like to think that my time in the pool over the past 5 months has begun to pay dividends.
The Bike
This race was my first race on the new bike and only the second time I’d ridden it outside i.e. not on the bike trainer. The course was billed as a flat and fast out and back. The Half Lite competitors made two laps of the course for a total of 40.3 miles. It was hard to check my Garmin regularly as my polarized sunglass lenses made it next to impossible to read the screen. I occasionally caught some glances and saw that my speed was ranging from 22-24 mph. I wasn’t working that hard to maintain that speed, which led me to believe that I had a slight downhill working to my advantage.
It wasn’t until I made the turn 10 miles out that I figured out that it was the wind pushing us out fast. That made the ten back in much tougher than anticipated and of course slowed me down. I was happy that for the first 20 miles I was able to hold the aero position most of the way. It wasn’t until the second leg that the position really started to get to me. The only discomfort that I had was in my neck. I could hold the position for a few minutes, but between the pain and the wind I was forced out of the aero bars for most of the way back.
I completed the course in 2:06:40 which made me 144th overall at a 19.2 mph average. In the DDT I was 155th of 236 which is exactly 2/3 of the way back. My Devilman split put me right in the middle of the pack – a marginal improvement.
The Run
Coming off a fast performance at Broad St. last weekend, I knew that no matter what I did in this race I’d feel slow. Yes, it’s comparing apples and oranges, but a run is a run, and you’re either faster or slower than before. I was slower by about a minute a mile, which seemed like an eternity sometimes. I ranged from 7:55-8:10 per mile for the first 6 miles, but after that I started to fade. It wasn’t much, but the last few miles drifted into the 8:20 range. I ended up averaging 8:09 on a course that everyone seemed to measure closer to 9.1 miles than the posted 8.8. As usual my run was my strongest leg compared to the rest of the field as I came in 116th of 293. My DDT pace was 9:03 and good enough for 114th of 236.
Summary
With transition times included, which need some work by the way, I finished the race in 3:50:18 – good enough for 131 out of 293 finishers. Playing a hypothetical numbers game I can try to convert this to a half Iron race keeping my transition times the same and assuming I continued to drift a bit on the run.
Swim: 0:33
Bike: 2:54
Run: 1:51
Transitions: 0:05
Total: 5:33
Comparing this time to my performance in Diamondman is fair given the overall similarity in terrain. I finished DDT in 6:04, so this looks to be an improvement. Now that I’ve broken down the race by the numbers, I feel better about how I did. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make my killer sunburn any easier to deal with. Time to put on more aloe.
Next Race: Saturday, May 14 - Doylestown Duathlon
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