Beaver Freezer Triathlon

Woke up this morning and the street was wet and it was raining, oh well. I've done 19 triathlons and 2 duathlons and only about 3 or 4 of them have had rain and only light sprinkles at that. The Beaver Freezer Triathlon is in Corvallis Oregon on the campus of Oregon State university, put on by the OSU sports club. It's the official start to the triathlon season here in Oregon. Anyway, driving down to Corvallis this morning, it was pouring- the kind of rain where you have to put the wipers on low instead of intermittent. Around Salem it lightened to intermittent wiper, Oregon drizzle. Then south of Salem towards Albany the rain stopped and a hole in the sky looked like it was over Corvallis. I think God likes triathletes! Checked in and set up my transition area and made it to the pool with about 30 minutes to spare. I started second in my lane- four people to a lane starting 5 seconds apart- and took off. Adrenaline kicked in and I went a little too fast because around lap 4 of 10 I was getting winded, so I slowed down slightly and got in a good rhythm and jumped out of the water with my watch saying 10 minutes 16 seconds- a new personal best! The volunteers timing us write your number down as you leave the pool area, so my official time shows 10 minutes 18 seconds. Jogged to the transition and it looked like it had sprinkled because the pavement was damp, but it wasn't raining now. Put on my bike stuff and took off trying to keep a 19 MPH or more pace. Did pretty well, there is a long gradual hill around mile three that slowed me a little and then some rollers around mile six to eight, but I was amazed at how quick the miles clicked by! Green Pea was talking about being in the zone- I think during parts of the bike ride and definitely during the run I was in that zone. I said thanks to the Corvallis police as I whizzed by them while they had traffic stopped for us. Saw one cow and mooed at it (I always moo at cows on bike rides), but not too much because I didn't want to waste energy. On the way back after mile 8 it is pretty much all slightly downhill, so I pushed it to 21 to 22 until back in the campus itself where there were pedestrians and brick walks, so I had to slow down to 17 to 18. Finished the bike (12 miles) in 37 minutes 49 seconds for a 19.0 MPH average and 6 seconds faster than last year. Changed into running shoes and knee braces and took off on the run. I started slowly then said to myself- go! So I started really running and tried to keep it as fast as I could while still being able to breath without laboring. At mile one (they had each running mile marked with little signs), I looked at my watch and it said 8:14 which is incredible for me! I got behind a youngish girl who was keeping a good pace and stayed with her until the third lap when she stepped it up and I was at my limit already. I crossed the line and my watch said 1 hour 20 minutes and some seconds which was two minutes or so faster than last year. The last lap on my watch said 25 minutes 30 seconds which is a personal best 5K run for me!! And that's after a swim and ride, I was very happy with that. That works out to an 8:14 per mile pace which is very fast for me. Not a drop of rain during the race and afterwards the sun came out and it was quite warm. My friend Kevin who does all the triathlons with me and a good part of training also has only beaten me once in 3 years, I'm 18-1 against him. So this year he joined the Headhunters triathlon team and trains with them and has really improved this year. He had gone to the race in the Headhunters van and I saw him at the end because he was in a different heat than me and he had forgotten to start his watch, so we didn't know his time. Well, here are the results from the OSU tri club and I'm 19-1 against him, beat him by 2 minutes. He improved by 9 minutes from last year. After the race I drink a bunch of electrolyte drinks and water and stretched and then found the free food table and had peanut butter and fruit and asked the cute collage girl volunteer where a good lunch place was and she suggest a Thai place on Monroe Street. I stayed for the raffle before awards and didn't win anything, so off to find the Thai place. Corvallis has presidential street names in what appears to be random order and then I figured it out- they're in order of when they were in office- so Monroe was an early president, so I went back to the other side of town and found it and up and down- no Thai place. I was very hungry and saw a Subway- good enough. After lunch I felt much better and saw Madison- I wonder if she meant that street? The drive back was cloudy, but nice until I got to the south end of Portland- and you guessed it- it was raining. So 3 personal bests for this race- swim time, run time, and percentile (I was 125th out of 318 overall which is 39%, my previous best was 41%). Al in all, very pleased with the whole experience.