Rick Fitzgerald – Age Group National Championships – Saturday, August 12, 2017

This was a fun race, with great weather. Unfortunately, the race started 30 mins late, due to traffic getting into the venue. This is my only complaint about the race organization. The water was 80.6 deg, so no wetsuit. The swim started with everyone holding onto the floating dock, then off to the buoys. I was not happy with my swim time, since I think I may have swum long. The dock was at an angle to the buoy field and I think the smarter swimmers took a different line to the turn buoy, than I did staying on the sight buoys. I missed the lead pack and was swimming mostly on my own. Swim: 31:55 43/102 M55-59 Got out of the water and immediately grabbed both hamstrings with cramps. I jogged to T1, stretched out and got in another Hot Shot, as well as Salt Stick. I had BASE Salt with me on the whole ride. T1: 3:45 (slow T1) Cramps went away during the ride and I rode hard on the bike. There were 12 refs on motorcycles looking for drafting and blocking. The course is mostly flat, with one small bridge and one big hill. Living here, I train on hills and was able to move quickly up the 10% grade hill, likely leaving mid-westerners behind me. The course then went out into some corn fields and was flat, until the return to climb the hill again. Same result. Caught a lot more people on the hill. Finished the ride strong and ran into T2 feeling good. Bike: 1:08:25 avg 21.8 mph 33/102 M55-59 Quick change into run shoes and hat, the off to the run course. T2: 2:18 The run course was a perfectly flat 2 loop course next to the lake. Sun was strong, but temps were reasonable. Felt very strong, with first half in 21:48. Stayed on BASE Salt each mile. By mile 4, I started feeling cramping again and by mile 5, I had to stop to stretch out the cramps in my hamstrings. This slowed my second half considerably. I picked up the pace again in the last mile, but I knew I fell off the pace I could have held otherwise. Run: 46:51 34/102 (7:33 min/mi) Overall 2:33:16 37/102 M55-59, 535/1087 male, 700/1991 overall I needed to place in top 25 to have a shot at Team USA. I was about 7 mins from that and I know some significant portion of those 7 mins was due to cramping. I can't let that dim what was a good race overall and I am happy about my performance. The best part of the post race festivities was the ice bath baby pools offered in the shade of a tent. That felt great!