Cranberry Trifest - Sprint
Lakeville, MA - August 2019 - 9th OA
Cranberry provides my favorite race atmosphere in New England. The weekend brings top local talent, rows of team tents for Sunday’s post-race BBQ, and the best post-race massages around. This year, I entered the Elite division’s King and Queen of Cranberry challenge – back to back days of adrenaline and camaraderie. This was my first time racing two days in a row and, with the Olympic distance race on day 2, I decided to hold back a bit in the sprint. This turned out to be the wrong approach, but hey, you live and you learn.
Swim
The 800 yard swim was not wetsuit legal, so I put on my swimskin and joined the elites and collegiate athletes in the water. I’m still trying to figure out how to properly pace the swim. In 2019, I was lucky to swim 5,000 yds in a week, so racing at a 1:20 pace made sense for my swim fitness at the time. I quickly broke out towards the front of the pack but had to let a few of the collegiate swimmers go. We were sighting directly into the sun after the turnaround and I thought I saw a kayaker waving me towards him, so I ended up wasting some time by taking the scenic route back to shore.
T1
I finally realized the value of flying mounts at this race. I got smoked in T1 by the people I entered it with which, in a sprint, can take some of the wind out of your sails. The flying mount lets triathletes skip the cumbersome process of donning bike shoes and awkwardly jogging to the bike mount line. Instead, you grab your bike and run towards the line and hop on your bike at speed. Similarly, the T2 flying dismount lets you avoid slowing to a complete stop to unclip and you can hustle to your rack.
Bike
This was the most frustrating bike ride in recent memory. Despite my slow transition, I passed two of the college kids once we hit the road. For some reason, they had gone straight across the street onto somebody’s lawn instead of turning right. I don’t know how or why that happened, but it provided some nice comic relief before they began getting under my skin. I remained in front of them for a few miles, but I suspect they worked together to catch back up to me and thought I was part of the collegiate race. The sprint course starts relatively flat before transitioning to constant rollers on the back half. They caught me just before the first roller and one of them sat right in front of my wheel while the other continued ahead. My new pal and I wasted matches playing a few rounds of tag in my effort to avoid a drafting penalty, though he didn’t seem to care. I eventually had enough and put in a two minute effort to leave him behind before making my way to T2.
T2
Round 2 of why I need to flying mount/dismount. The kid from earlier had caught back up to me and as I slowed down to stop, unclip, and jog into T2, he flew by me and lost no momentum hopping off his bike and running into transition.
Run
This run was weird. This was my first experience with not leaving everything on the race course (which I probably could and should have done). Part of this was a mental block given the Olympic Distance race was the next morning, and part was a conscious effort on my part to ensure I maintained strong energy levels across both days of racing. Either way, my legs felt rather heavy from all the surging on the bike and I struggled to settle into a rhythm. The run course for the sprint is simple enough – somewhat of a lollipop that has you go out on a flat, up a hill that loops back towards the finish, then connects with the road you take on the way out. I ran roughly 6:17/mile through this course which set me up well for the slightly trickier Olympic course the following day.
Post-race, I spent some time playing with the recovery arsenal I travel with (HyperVolt+, HyperSphere, lax ball, foam roller, and foam stick), cooked myself a solid recovery meal, and put my feet up for some R&R. Oh, and did I mention that I stretched?
