Route 66 Olympic Distance Triathlon race report

This is being posted late due to being very busy, but this race was the day after the sprint on June 1, 2008.

Okay, onto the race on Sunday. Frankly, I didn't care what happened because I was still on Cloud 9 from the sprint on Sat. I hurt my shoulder the week before the race, and it was pretty sore on Sunday morning, so I almost decided not to race because I didn't want to have to go through the pain during the swim. Then thought, why not? My race goals were to avoid injury on the swim, hammer the bike, then walk the run if I had to. I had put out so much energy on Sat. that I was just freakin' exhausted. But then as we're prepping before the race, Buzz is on the mic naming off notables who are racing in the race. Now I'm a realist and completely understand that there are at least 2 dozen triathletes in OK that are faster than me--I'm not kidding myself thinking I'm better than I really am--but I can't tell you how amazing it is for someone like me, who's always been average, to hear "Kris Karsten, 2008 Oklahoma State Champion." Damn, it was an awesome feeling. So I decided to just give it everything I had. Weather was perfect...low wind (by OK standards), smoothish lake, cloud cover to keep the sun away on the run.

I start the swim and feel very tired. I coast for the first 500 meters or so and then pick it up after my shoulder loosened up a bit. I started passing a lot of people toward the end, but once again, swimming is my downfall. I swam a pretty slow 28:11 and came out of the water in 34th place out of 143.

I got out of T1 and onto the bike. My goal was to start out at 200 watts and ramp up from there. Worked perfectly again, just like on Sat. I hammered as hard as I possibly could, but I just didn't have it quite in me and I started slacking a little bit at the end. I did a 1:04:40 and had the 7th fastest bike split out of 143. I was content with this since my legs were already toast before I even started the race!

I thought I'd fall over from my legs giving out when I headed out of T2, but then the competitive juices started flowing. There were a few people ahead of me that I knew I could run down, so I gritted my teeth, sucked it up, and ran as best I could. I ended up not getting passed by anyone on the run and had a decent split, especially considering how tired I was. I ran a 42:44 for the 16th fastest run out of 143.

Overall, pretty good race and I'll take it. I met all my goals for the day and had a new PR of 2:17:04. I know I could have had a really great day if I could swim faster and wasn't so tired, so I didn't have any complaints. I finished 10th overall out of 143 (Pro, Daniel Agnew excluded from results) and finished 3rd out of 28 in a very competitive age group.