The Hubby Tri's!!

This was Wayne's first Olympic distance triathlon, and serendipitously the Black Diamond race weekend fell on his birthday as well, so it was a fun way to celebrate turning a year older for him. A few months ago he had me write up a training plan, but the real training started when we began working with his swimming stroke last winter. He had not previously been a fan of swimming, for the same reason many athletes aren't - too boring going up and down the lanes, too frustrating when it feels like you're battling the water. Fortunately, it didn't take too long for him to turn the technique around and start moving up to faster lanes in the Master's swim group and then with the addition of a wetsuit this summer and some lake swims, he really took off. That all paid off this Sunday with a rocking 24:27 swim time, putting him as the 32nd fastest swimmer of the day. Yeah!
We had camped out at a campground along the race course, so the kids and I walked out to watch him come by on the bike, and he was right up there with all of the super-aero'd out tri-studs. He looked great on the bike, keeping up a good pace of 18.5 mph despite being on his heavy steel frame touring Bianchi with no aero bars. He finished up the bike strong with a 1:20.


Onto the run, he got to experience that lovely lead-legs feeling that triathletes love to hate, but shook it off eventually. Unfortunately, an injury left him not able to really train for the run this summer and so he missed enjoying some of his usual distance running speed, but he still clocked a respectable 53:59 on the run for an 8:41 average pace (not bad with almost no run training in the last 2 months!) and brought it all home in 2:46:17. Asa asked the race officials if she could run down the chute with him, and so he finished in style with a smile on his face. I'm just so happy to see how excited he was by this race and looking forward to doing some more race weekends together in the future. I think with the addition of a more aero bike position and an ability to utilize his running ability he will be able to kick this time down in the future.

Go Wayne!