St. Croix race report
St Croix Race Report...
"Oy, that's a tough course".. Those words from Spencer Smith rang in my head all day.
The normal race-day 3:00am went off and I got up to begin the fueling, drive across the island to the race start and get my transition area set up. I misjudged the time by 30 minutes, and ended up at transition before ANYONE else was there. This gave a prime location for my bike, but left me a lot of time to wander around and get nervous.
The weather was overcast and the forecast called for spotty showers. This turned out to be a real blessing as the race progressed.
At around 6:00am, the masses begin swimming over to the swim start. The swim start is at a beach on a small cay about 50 yards off the wharf in Christiansted. The starts were in waves, and mine was set to go at 6:43.
The non-wetsuit swim was a long out & back affair. Once past the shelter of the cay, the wind picked up and the waves started rolling in. I was able to find a rhythm and kept up a good pace, but still swallowed a lot of sea water.
The St. Croix race has to have the toughest bike course in triathlon. The course is relentless, with lots of sharp climbs, hard braking for turns and lousy road surfaces that beat up your upper body. You can never get into any smooth rhythm on this course. Then to top it off, you have the climb "the Beast". This is a 7/10 mile hill, with a 600 ft incline. Average grade is 14% with a peak grade of 21%. The approach to the Beast is on an up-grade, then a hard left turn and you immediately hit a 12% segment. There are 1/10 mile markers to gauge your progress, and gradient indicators spray painted on the road. Taking an outside line around the corners saves you some pain, but only a little.
I made it up to the 21% grade, (about 2/3 s of the way up the hill) and got three pedal strokes down, and unclipped. It was that, or fall over. Either way I was stopping. I walked the bike up about 30' to a slightly more level spot on the outside of a corner, and mounted the bike and kept climbing.
Fortunately, there is a very long pay-back descent after the beast. Unfortunately the road is very rough. I saw several water bottles ejected from behind-the-seat racks, adding a dodge-ball game to the 35mph speeds. Somewhere along this descent, my brand new CatEye double wireless bike computer got ejected. I wrote it off as a sacrifice to the Beast.
About 2 miles after the beast, you approach a small housing area, with 11 large speed bumps. Another set of challenges to an already tough course. Beyond this distraction, there were long stretches along and around the south end of the island where there were no spectators. The weather continued to cooperate, with spotty sprinkles and blessedly cloudy skies.
Off the bike and out of T-2 quickly, I headed for the port-o-johns, then ran out on to what I thought was the course. Ooops, I ended up back at the end of the bike course. I turned around and headed back the right way on out on to the run. The run is a two loop out-and back with about a 3 mile run through a golf course. While the view is nice, the loop through the Buccaneer course is very hard, with several long steep climbs. Tough on the ascent as well as the descent. My first loop was a disaster. I was reduced to a shuffling pace, alternating with walks. Once again my GI tract was fighting me. I would try to get my pace back up to my normal race pace, only to shut down less than a mile later. After the 1/2 way point, my left Achilles tendon started to sing, so I shortened my stride a bit and found that I could maintain a slow but steady jog with a good foot-speed turnover. Between that and my stomach settling down allowed me to negative-split my run. During both loops of the run, the weather continued to cooperate with some nice cooling rains every few minutes, and a nice steady, cooling breeze.
At the end of the run, the course makes an out and back through Christiansted. At the turn to come back to the finish, I felt my right hamstring start to cramp. At that point a young local girl, about 12 or 13 and two young boys about 9 or 10 started cheering for me. "Oh no, you won't let that cramp stop you, you gotta run mon!" The two little boys started running along side of me and cheered me on. As we approached the finish, I looked down and said "you ready to run for the big finish?" The kids looked up at me with these huge smiles and we sprinted in the last 50 yards through the finish gate
High-fives all around for the kids. That finish put the first smile on my face all day.
Results:
Total: 6:25:27 43/75 age group 305/523 total
Swim: 31:43 12/75 age group 63/523 total 1:36/100m avg
Bike: 3:19:23 39/75 age group 264/523 total 16.9mph avg
Run: 2:34:21 60/75 age grouo 413/523 total 11:47/mile avg