Torii Fall Triathlon Results and Review

Last Sunday, November 15th was the Torii Fall Triathlon. My first ever tri was the Torii Spring Tri in March of 2008. I had heard they usually do two a year but either missed it last fall or they didn’t run it. I’m not sure which. This course was the same as last Spring’s course which was significantly different that my first experience. The swim was 1000m in the ocean (two laps of a 500m U shaped course with a run up the beach between laps), followed by a LONG transition to the bike. We had to jog up the driveway to the gate area. My TI time was around 5:00 minutes and that wasn’t because I was slow getting on the bike; it was mostly the jog to the bike. We rode 8 laps around a course that included the eastern perimeter road, but it cut through the center of the base on the northwestern side rather than following the perimeter road like the first time I did this event. Finally the run was an out and back affair along the northwest perimeter road.

I think I prefer the old course for several reasons:

1. The bike leg was 5 laps instead of 8. It’s challenging to keep track of 5 laps let alone 8. Also, the old course was faster; perhaps a bit more dangerous though.
2. The run leg was three mini out and back loops which gave you three opportunities to gage your progress against your competition. This course only lets you see them once and also is one great big climb and then decent.
3. The long run in T1 is a pain. I didn’t feel it at the time, but my feet were bruised up from that. I could’ve thrown on some shoes but it just isn’t worth the time and you don’t notice the pain while in race mode. I did the next day though.

My results were good. I finished 5th overall, 4th for individuals, 2nd for 40+ age group. I was beat by 17 seconds in my age group. I was about 150m behind Mat Lubbers the entire run. If I’d known that was for first place I might’ve dug in a little harder. However, my training wasn’t race specific leading up to the event and I was just happy to be in such a good position. I figured I should just hold on and keep from blowing up and I had fifth place locked up. Looking back at it, I had some issues in T2 and a slow start to the swim that could’ve easily made up that 17 seconds, but hindsight isn’t very effective race strategy.

This course was the same as last spring so I was able to do some direct comparisons. My swim time was way better and this swim was in big swell and chop. Some people turned around at the first bouy and went back in. The DoD has a system of signals regarding safety for getting in the water. On the morning of the race, it was only one level below condition RED (when nobody is even allowed in the water). The wind and waves made it fairly dicey. Also, the wave action stirred up the sand so there was no visibility a the start, lap, and finish. I hit a rock twice (once during warm up and once in the race) that was only inches below the surface but I couldn’t see it due to the silt. All in all, my swim must be way better. Gina says I was 4th or 5th out of the water.

I rode the bike within 10 seconds of last year’s time, but I did it with much less effort this year. Because hadn’t done any race simulations or bricks leading up to this event, I worried about how my legs would do after the ride so I took it a little easier.

In the run, my calves were twichy for the first kilometer and I worried about cramps. I settled into a comfortable rhythm that had me holding a 4:10 pace at 162bpm. For me, that is very fast at a very low rate. I typically lose a lot of speed in my runs after a hard bike. However, I’ve been focussing on speed work in my run training for the last 3 months or so and I think it’s really starting to pay off. I ran the whole leg under 165 (typical race pace rate for me is 175 – 180) and still ran a 20:15 5k split. In training, I’ve hit 19:15 for 5k on fresh legs and at a much higher rate in training so I’m very pleased with that result. I also have been lifting consistently this fall and that is helping me with my endurance and effort. I’ve gone from 2 pull ups to 10 and my hip flexor work has improved my form in the run even when tired so I’m keeping more efficient to the end of the race. My overall time was within seconds of last spring’s, but my overall effort to get there was easier (except for the swim…I had a much more challenging swim this time as did everyone). That time got me around 10th overall last year and 5th this year. Part of that is because turnout was a little lower, but also part of that was the swim was likely a lot slower for everyone.

We had good weather and the Torii Station MWR folks did a good job of hosting. I usually leave fairly quickly after a race so I missed out on the food. I would’ve stayed if they would’ve mentioned that there would be food. Also, I wish the race brief would come far earlier so we get an opportunity to warm up before starting. Virtually every tri I’ve done wants to do the briefing right at the time I want to be warming up. That’s frustrating because the beginning of the swim is hard enough with a proper warm up. It’s truly intimidating when you are overwhelmed from the sprint start because you couldn’t warm up.

I’m not sure when my next event will be. I found out that Ishigaki is the same day as the start of Far East Music so I’ll be working. I have some time to train and choose something starting next March though.

This was my second event with the Garmin 310xt and it performed very well. Unfortunately, the GPS doesn’t work well in the water. I figured open water swim would track but the water must mess up the timing of the satellites. Also, it’s not quite as accurate with altitude as my 705 (I think it’s calculated rather than pressure based) so the climbing stats in my log are way off. I do like the auto-multi sport feature for the race though. You just hit the lap button at each transition and it automatically knows to go to the next sport in the que.. The display can be programmed specifically for each sport. Currently though, there is a bug that doesn’t allow for auto-lap to function at the same time as multi sport. Too bad because counting those 8 laps on the bike automatically would’ve been nice.

Torii Fall Triathlon Full Results

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