Galena..Windy and Cold

Well going into Galena you always know it is going to be a cold swim but yesterday the swim was the refreshing part. The water was somewhere around sixty-two degrees and the outside temp had to be around forty-five or lower with huge wind so getting into the lake was the warm part.

They changed the course this year and the course was awesome but the weather added an extra challenge. With huge wind, cold temps and a very challenging course it made for a tough day.

The swim started out fine with no big surprises. I thought I swam faster than what they have for my split so not sure if this is all in my head or if the timing mat was at a different location. Either way no big deal but definitely need to figure out why my wetsuit rubs on my neck.

The bike course was great but a challenge. Considering where we live we don't get to ride hills all that often and this course had a lot of them. It started out pretty windy right at the top of the hill at T1. I tried to just find my groove and get my heart rate down from the swim, oh ya and get the feeling back in my body. As things progressed in the bike things moved along relatively uneventful. I seemed to pass a ton of people on the hills as I rarely got out of the saddle and just spun up them with a higher cadence on the lower gear, I was only passed by one person on the bike and had to pass somewhere in the twenties which is a new experience for me. The work through the winter definitely helped as the legs fairly felt good on a tough course.

The run was the downfall of the day, the run course ended with a brutal hill and I never felt good the whole time on the run. My calves felt tight right after getting off the bike but came around a quarter of a mile in but just couldn't seem to find that other gear on the run. I had no idea what my pace was on the run as I didn't use my Garmin and my new crappy Timex watch got messed up so was just going on feel. I think about ten guys went flying by me on the run but I didn't have anything left to go after them. The worst part of the day was the hill at the end of the run course, it was brutal and took everything I had to get to the top.

Overall the day was a positive, beat my time from last year on a tougher and longer course and finished tenth in my age group out of ninety-eight guys. I was fifty-fourth overall out of seven hundred ninety-nine. Age group is top ten percent and overall top seven percent so room to improve but not bad.

Hope they keep this course next year as no I can improve on my time.