Brooklyn biathlon report

I love this race.  I’ve done it and done pretty well, and I’ve done it when I knew I wouldn’t do well, and either way, it’s a fun race.  It’s short enough that pretty much anyone can do it, it's early in the season, and you never know who’s going to show up.  All that means that really, there’s no point in having any expectations, but it’s a good place to shake out cobwebs.  And oh, I got cobwebs.  In fact, I realized when I took my trusty tri bike outside for a test spin the weekend before the race, that the last time I’d ridden it outside was the Brooklyn Bi last year.   Hah!  So, I’m pretty much all cobweb.

While I’m fat and out of shape, I have been doing a bit more than I was last year at this time, so was pretty convinced that I could see some kind of improvement.  But I'm far from well trained, so that wasn’t my goal – my goal was to get out there, remember why I like racing, and get some motivation to keep it up – I’m still finding it really hard to squeeze everything all in.   And my race showed it – sure, I shaved a couple seconds off last year’s run and bike times, but nothing spectacular.  Wake up call!

 I did, however, get a chance to practice something I’ve been thinking about all winter:  a fancy bike-run dismount.  Last summer,  triathlete extraordinaire Terry Moore led a clinic on improving transitions, and we discussed a fun technique where you get out of your shoes on the approach to the transition area, swing a leg over the crossbar, coast into transition and then come off the bike running – the bike never stops moving.  At the time, I thought “hey I do that on my commuter after I’ve picked up my coffee in the morning and coast up the sidewalk to work.”  If I can do it in city traffic, I can do it in a race.  So that was my only goal.  I didn’t have a chance to practice , and so it was ‘do I dare try it during a race?’  And I did.  And nailed it.  I’d therefore like to think of it as “the Green Light Special”. 

Although, running my bike nimbly into transition, I had to come screeching to a halt so as not to run over the two guys fiddling with their bike shoes blocking the "bike in".  Argh.  So it goes.

Congrats to my teammates and friends who did so well, and my “Team 46” neighbors Bruce and Jamie in their first ever multisport event.  And see you all out there – hopefully before next year.

Comments

[joncane]

two thumbs up. It's always great to have Green Light e decked out in red and black.