Tuscaloosa Triathlon
Well I managed to get out of town for the weekend. Gadsden lulls you into a trance- when you first get here you realize that it isn’t a very fun place to live and how note how little there is to do or see. Then it grabs hold and you become apathetic and think-wow it isn’t so bad we have a Chili’s, Applebee’s and a movie theater.
Then you get out of town for the weekend and it is as if you stepped back out into the real world. You see interesting stores, green spaces, non-chain restaurants, people between the ages of 20 and 45! What a revelation.
Well after getting home from work on Friday evening at an obscenely late hour I loaded up most of my apartment into my car. Everything I needed to shoot and transmit a freelance gig and all of my bike/tri gear.
I drove to Tuscaloosa in the pouring rain, had a near death experience with a retired police cruiser hydroplaning and spinning across three lanes of traffic missing me by feet and then safely arriving at the hotel at 1:30 in the morning. I went over to the University of Alabama Campus and shot the Olympic triathlon Trials. 
The trials: Wow this is a whole new flavor of triathlon. Instead of a few hundred people treading water then all taking off to swim around some buoys. The athletes lined up on a dock and dove in all at one in front a huge crowd. They swam remarkably quickly and in each race one of the athletes opened up a big gap. The bike course was rather different from other triathlons that I have seen. Drafting was legal so it wasn’t a matter of getting on a super aero bike with a pointy teardrop helmet, spinning a big disc wheel and time trialing. No siree this was a road race complete with some mini packs, chase groups and break always. That said it was almost like a crit as we had eight laps to see the racers come by. Then off to the run with some of the fastest transitions I have ever seen, they would run in and as the wheels of the bike were still spinning, grab running shoes and be off again. Then the run, again 4 laps which gave us lots of time to check split times and to see tactics evolve. The trials were amazingly fun to watch but that the same time demoralizing-these people are in a different universe of speed.
Ok-off to work- I’ll add about Sunday when I get a break
Tuscaloosa Tri
While an awful video it is intersting to see the course from a local’s perspective and a newspaper person too. The bike course looks a bit tough-but for me i live for the hills and this will equal out some of the advantages the people with the aero bikes and helemets will have.
I am just worried about our swim leg. 64 sounds a tad brisk.
not last
actually i was 20th at the Live to Ride Road Race at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham. This was my first real road race-50 some guys on a curvy course. I just tried to stay out of trouble. I went out front once just to try and pick up the pace-but got caught. I made up a lot of spots on the hills but then the entire group would slow down and I would squeezed back again. I barely stayed out of a wreck, and it was rather nerve wracking to ride in a group that big-with people not holding lines. But I survived and finished with a slightly strung out main group-7 seconds behind the leader.
then i went on a ride with Scot and Athena and got killed-oh well-just digging around in the pain cave.
then I went on a 40 mile ride with Scot and Athena and got killed-oh well-just digging around in the pain cave.
Tri pix
Triathlon Reward
Ice cream and a big nasty cheeseburger, likely more calories than I burned in the whole race, but darn it was tasty.
My First Triathlon: Mountain Lakes Triathalon
I finished, it was hard but fun. I cannot wait to do it again. I’ll write a long post about my epic race later.
Here are my times
Open-Male 20-24
17th 796 Eric Wright Gadsden AL Swim 0:14:32.03 T1 0:02:39.96 Bike 0:51:34.05 T2 0:01:36.25 Run 0:29:56.82 Total 1:40:19.10
10K Metrics
Ok, so it wasn’t a race and it was early in the day, and i was rocking the ipod, but these are hilarious…. and they better get a heck of a lot better if I wanna do that tri.
The lap times were set at the mile marker, so the reason there is a 7th lap is that pesky .2 that results with the metric to imperial(english?) conversion
Now for the bike TT
Total : 1:16.46.371
Lap 1: 09.39.692
Lap 2: 11.32.743
Lap 3: 12:27.342
Lap 4: 13.08.327
Lap 5: 13.53.889
Lap 6: 13.10.940
Lap 7: 02.36.554
ps. for the nerds out there the numbers don’t quite add up because in my state of delirium at the run I accidentally created a couple of laps while stopping the timer.
My Photo Stream
