Philadelphia Triathlon, Finally a Race Worthy of a Report

On my sixth attempt at a triathlon (4 sprints last year, 2nd Olympic this year) I finally, finally actually raced one. And I'll admit, having a decent race and performing at or at least close to your potential on that day in each of the three disciplines is a hell of lot more fun than totally 'sucking' on race day. I was really good at the latter, crying and hyperventilating on the swim and struggling to make it out of the water, spotting the field a good 20 minutes or more. The mental aspect of that alone was usually enough to dictate the remainder of my poor performances - it honestly was never 'fun' for me and I continually questioned why I kept trying...

The Philly Tri yesterday wasn't exactly 'the performance of a lifetime' but it was a breakthrough nonetheless and after having learned of my selection in the Cadence Kona Challenge just a few days prior it meant that such a race was badly needed if I were to have a chance at completing Lake Placid.

I'm not going to go into all the boring details, twists, turns and mind tricks of the race but there were a few items of note:

1) About halfway into the swim I consciously realized that I was actually SWIMMING, that I was doing it and I was happy - then, Buffalo folks will appreciate this, I honestly told myself "keep at it and don't get too confident, it's not over yet" and then reminded myself that the Buffalo Bills played really well in the first HALF of several Super Bowls and still managed to lose them all ... so I had to keep pushing all the way to the end. (Then I actually laughed at my own joke which resulted in my swallowing a fair amount of the Schuylkill River ... yuck! joke over - "remember the Bills!" ;-)

2) Hopefully the course photographers were looking the other way as I entered the bike dismount area, the only place where the fans were out in force yelling and cheering me on as I approached the bike finish - my adrenaline was pumping as I expertly unclipped my right foot, pushed back in the saddle, came to a dead stop then went to unclip my left foot and hop off, but instead my foot stayed attached and I pulled myself and my bike sprawling onto the ground in front of all of our adoring fans making for an unconventional, but not uncommon dismount! What can I say, it happens ...

3) By coincidence it turned out that the only other Cadence Challenge finalist to compete in Philly was James, the other winner who'll also be going to Lake Placid. It was really fun to see him for the first time on the run (he was WAY ahead of me and we passed on an out and back part of the course). And since Cadence was also a major sponsor of the race it was fun to see a lot of Cadence Coaches and Staff at the race and cheering us on - thanks Cadence!

4) After the race I had the extreme pleasure of just hanging out with James & Wendy and the newest and most handsome Pearson, Ben! ( I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of him, though in my defense, he did sleep the whole time - yes triathlon talk can be that boring, just ask Wendy! ;-)

5)Wearing the Cadence 'Kit' meant James and I were recognized by our fellow triathletes from the magazine and our blogs - it was tough having to fend off all the fans and paparazzi - but we handled them all without out incident. Well, uh, OK, so between us maybe there were a dozen or more folks that spoke with us or wished us well by name - but it was really cool talking to everyone and hearing from people who said they had voted for us, were reading our blogs and cheering us on - thanks you guys!!

Overall Rank 777 of 1892
Class Rank 12 of 56
Swim 00:34:37
Swim Rank 1472 of 1892
Trans1 00:03:32
Bike 01:10:05
Bike Rank 251 of 1892
MPH 21.2
Trans2 00:01:56
Run 00:56:18
Run Rank 1014 of 1892
Pace 00:09:04
SexRank 149 of 597
Final 02:46:30

So does that qualify as a 'race report?' If you don't have anything better to do, feel free to compare it to my race two weeks prior, the Keuka Lake Triathlon (same distance - my place was 195 and I show up on page 6).