Blue Lake Olympic

Another race is in the books. I entered Blue Lake Olympic to help as a tune up race for CDA in two weeks. Entering the weekend I was suffering from IT pain in my right knee. It was getting progressively better, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to run full strength. That was ok. I was going to get out there to really swim and bike and practice transitions. So the alarm went off early this morning and we headed out to Blue Lake. I set up transition quickly and was able to spend some time with Meghan before I had to get my wetsuit on and get down to the swim start. However, 7:45 came early enough so I zipped up the wetsuit and headed down to the start.


The elite wave I was in was quite full. I expected there to be some fast swimmers which was good. I wanted to get out and swim relatively hard. The horn went off and I instantly surged towards the front. There was a group of 3 that was working well together and had their sights set on a fast swim time. I made some tactical errors and unfortunately was left behind this group. I made an attempt to bridge up to them early on, but without success. Luckily there was a second pack that had formed. During all this I had swum past another athlete that is normally good for somewhere between 20-22 min swim so I knew I was swimming well. I settled in with the chase group and enjoyed some draft before finally rounding home and getting out of the water. I was 5th or 6th upon exiting the lake. I have no idea on time as I didn't have a watch.


Some minor wetsuit issues in transition and then I was off. We had a long, muddy run to get to the bike mount. Since I have been racing Ironman and half Ironman distances exclusively for some years now, I'm no longer great at getting into my shoes when they are clipped into my bike. I lost 30 seconds fiddling with them once I mounted my bike. Anyway, out onto Marine drive and I was feeling good. The plan was to press the pace and try and come in somewhere around an hour for my split. I felt pretty good for most of the ride. I struggled to find that next gear and constantly found myself looking down to 70.3 pace instead of Oly pace. Honestly I just haven't done a ton of fast pacing so this was definitely a limiter for me today. Anyway, not sure on my spit. I think my garmin said 1:02 or 1:03 but that included my run before the mount. Anyway, feeling pretty good. I think I entered transition in 6th or 7th overall.


And that is pretty much the end of my race. My knee was hurting pretty bad on the run so I pretty much jogged and walked my way in. Not sure what my run split was, again no watch, but if I had to guess it was close to 50 min. This is about 10 minutes slower than I would normally run so I will admit it was a bit discouraging watching everyone pass me and not be able to do anything about it. As I turned into the chute I had figured I would be somewhere between 2:15 - 2:20 due to the run and the slow transitions. I was happy to hear that I was 2:15. Once I see the results I will have a better idea how the swim and bike shapped up. Overall I feel pretty good about the first two sections, but will be taking extra special care of the knee to get it ready for CDA. Had a great time out there today. It was really fun to do an Olympic again. It was great to have my mom there to cheer with Meghan. They hadn't been to an Olympic distance event in some time either and were joking about how much fun it was since everything moved so fast.


Well, that's it. Time to treat this knee and work on some taper for CDA. Thanks for checking in! Be safe out there.


-T