Collegiate Nationals this past weekend was by far the most well organized event I’ve ever competed at. This year’s race even far surpassed last year’s event, and I also raced much better.
My swim is slowly coming along, but remains my biggest weakness. I was happy to come out of the water in a new best 1500m time of 28:42, although the official split was taken at transition over a quarter mile away. My T1 went smoothly and I had no trouble getting the lower half of my wetsuit off, having already removed the top half on the run up to transition. All seemed well as I headed out of transition with a T1 split of just over a minute. My mount may have been the worst I’ve ever had in a transition – as was my dismount. Bookending a decent ride at 23.6 mph (1:04:38 for 25.46 miles by my computer), my mount and dismount cost me around 45 seconds total. The run around to the back side of transition was also included in the “official” bike split, resulting in a time over 90 seconds slower than I was actually on my bike for. My mount and dismount are certainly two areas that I can work on looking ahead this year. Off the bike, I ran one of my best 10k’s ever and by far my best triathlon split of 38:53. No doubt that can be attributed to my marathon training this past winter. Oddly enough, it is about equal to the pace that I ran in both of my sprint races so far this year.
Overall I finished with a personal best time for the Olympic distance by more than 2 minutes (2:17:34) and the Clemson Triathlon Team did well also (http://www.teamsportfactory.com/2011/04/clemson-tigers-claw-their-way-up-at-collegiate-nationals/)
