Message posted by: Craig W.

Yes, I really meant 1/3 race report. I was convinced to be the swim member for an Oly relay this past weekend for the Lansing Legislature tri , at Sleep Hollow state park near Lansing Michigan.

this was all last minute and thus no taper or training consideration were made. in fact I re-arranged my training schedule slightly to make the 1500m swim just one of my workout swims. I hadn't ever tried this distance in competition so I was curious what results I could attain.

Saturday afternoon we checked into the campground and went to check out the transition area, swim course and race layout. As I stood at the waters edge looking at the buoy's my first impression was "holy crap!!" that distance looks really long in open water. Once I got over that shock I decided to go negative 500 splits to build toward the finish with hopes of reeling in a few competitors along the way.

Sunday morning we awoke to the sound of thunder and the flash of lighting. Yeah, the gods are on my side. There is no way they can have the race now, lol. We got around and headed down to the race starting location to hear the good, er I mean bad news… darn it! They say it's an isolated cell coming by and we should be good to go by race time in 2 hours. Oh well, I'm up I might as well keep my end of the relay up. Sure enough by 30 minutes before race start the storm had passed and the rain was begin to break up as well.

At the appointed time we all pile into the water for the Oly/Oly relay start only to get called back out because they didn't have a head count. How could anything else go wrong now I thought?? How wrong I was again. Everyone back in the water, ready to go. 1 min warning, 30 second warning, 10 second warning…… eternity waiting…. loud pop like a starters pistol goes off, people start swimming, I thinking that was odd I thought they had a horn to start us?? then I hear the horn go off 3 strokes into my swim… what the heck?? (I find out afterwards that someones bike tire popped right before the horn went off)

So, the actually swim report. The swim course was set up in a triangle 500m on each side. I took off on the initial 500m with a Ron , take a nap, attitude. Nice long rolling stroke. I felt great!! I let most of the sprinters fly by at the start and had lots of clear water to swim in. I kept the leaders in reach but didn't push anything too hard. After the 500m buoy, I kicked it up a notch. Kept the stroke long and rolling and started picking hapless victims to pass each time I sighted for the next buoy. By 1000m I only had 5 or 6 left ahead of me and the stroke was feeling strong. As I picked up the pace a little more I started feeling the dreaded pull in my big toe on my left foot. I tried to relax the foot and switched my breathing to the other side figuring I was just pushing it too hard with the kick during my breath stroke. This held things together pretty well for a couple of hundred meters before the toes on my left foot cramped solid. The race was no longe
r a strategic pick off the leaders one at a time and turned into a don't loose too much ground for my team struggle. The last 200 or so meters were about as excruciating a test of pain tolerance as I can ever remember. When I finally was able to stand up and let the ground force my toes to un-curl it was almost like heaven. I managed to stumble into transition and rip the timing strap off my leg and hand it off our rider before collapsing to the ground. I was pretty happy I didn't have to do the rest of the race on my own at that point. However, I felt pretty incomplete after a few minutes like without the bike or run something wasn't finished, lol. End result I was respectable and didn't loose it for the team.

1500 meter time 26:09 1st out of 3 in the relay, good enough for an 8th place finish out of 86 over all and 1st in my AG.

our relay result was 2nd out of 3 10 minutes behind 1st. side note (we were a team of 40 somethings and were beat by 3 twenty somethings, we were pretty happy with that.)

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