On Saturday 9 April the U.S. Air Force defended their title at the Armed Forces Triathlon Championships hosted by Pt Mugu Naval Air Station, CA. With a majority of us on last years team, our goal was to repeat our victories in the men's and women's division. Since I train mainly for Ironman events, I have a difficult time keeping up with the speed demons who dominate the Olympic distance within the military so I'm content with simply contributing to the Air Force's effort in chasing the team victory. The race is set up using ITU draft legal rules with multiple laps for all three disciplines. The race begins with a beach start with the swim consisting of two laps of an inverted triangle. This proved to be the most challenging aspect of the race. Based upon last year's race, the swim ended up being about 4-7 minutes longer due to inaccurate measurements and stronger than normal currents. For us non-swimmers, this ended up being a huge obstacle. Besides being in the ocean longer than I desired, the temperature of the water was in the low 50s, something that took over an hour to recover from. In fact, one of our triathletes was pulled from the race for hypothermia. Once on the bike I was abel to join up with a Marine and we were able to work together to slowly pick off other triathletes. After picking up another Marine, the three of us worked the entire remaining 30K to finish the four loop bike course in 54 minutes. Conditions were to last year except with a little stronger winds, but nothing too detrimental. After exiting T2, I began the run with one of the Marines I biked with. We ran stride for stride the entire 10K, an experience that can bond athletes, especially if you share the military connection. After crossing the line in 2:00:23 I was a little disappointed with the results even though I felt strong throughout the race. I just couldn't understand what happened. That is until I talked with my teammates and realized everyone had the same experience with dramatically slower swim times compared to last year. The reason why I had such a vested interest in my results was the fact that my training has been dramatically different. For my entire triathlon career my training has been focused on LSD, long slow distance with high volume and low intensity. After recently coming to the realization that I can no longer dedicate hours upon hours to training on a daily basis, I made the conscious decision to rethink my workout regime. That's when I decided to adopted CrossFit and CrossFit Endurance. Below is a comparison of last year's times and this years results. In the next post I'll share some of my thoughts on CrossFit and where I plan to go from here in order to focus my attention on preparing for Ironman Canada.
2010 - 1:54:41
2011 - 2:00:23
Swim
2010 - 23:47
2011 - 28:54 (+5:07)
Bike
2010 - 53:28
2011 - 54:07 (+0:39)
Run
2010 - 35:57
2011 - 35:47 (-0:10)
