While everyone else in the triathlon world prepares to go long at either Louisville or Sandusky in the coming weeks; Leah Halloran, Rob Thompson, and Mike Schaefer decided to go short at the Lorain Triathlon. Solid performances were put in by all three as Aussie won the male overall, Leah won the female overall, and Mike rounded out the men’s podium with a nice 3rd. SSSMST had people outside the race too; with Paul and Tammy Lentini waking up early to volunteer along with Jen Petkovsek.
An odd swim greeted the racers, but everyone took it in stride. Read through for the reports.
Under cloudy skies the athletes lined up for the swim, only to be told that the coast guard felt it too choppy to allow people to swim outside the break-wall; bummer. Instead, competitors were treated to a swog (swim/jog), or skim (skip/swim) inside the break-wall where the water ranged from ankle, to chest deep. It made for some interesting techniques and blazing fast swim times!
Aussie –
Been looking for a good race to finish the multisport season… this was a perfect weekend for it. Haven’t been running or swimming so the sprint sounded perfect. Lamastra was kind enough to give me his pre-paid voucher, so I essentially raced for free; cheers Jim! Got there a little late and was caught riding my bike through transition by some d-bag volunteer with a good arm (Lentini was bossing transition and drilled me with a magic marker from about 50 feet). My bad!
There was a slight chop to the lake, so of course the swim was modified….we had to “swim” inside the break wall, which was knee deep most of the way. In this scenario i reckon i could take Jim in the water, and was one of the first out of the water with my superb skipping/wading technique. Sloppy transition saw Jason Zangmiester (snakebite racing, very good runner) leave transition ahead of me. Knew i had to bury it on the bike and try to build a big buffer or get run down. Passed him at the 1 mile mark and had 13 miles left to try and build a lead. It was fun riding behind the cop car and being the lead rider. Felt really good on the bike and got to push my biggest gear on the run in back to transition; always a good sign.
Got back to T2 and apparently (no official splits as of this writing) had put a few minutes on the rest of the field. Ran hard to the turnaround and saw no one within about a half mile of me. When i realised i had the luxury of easing up a bit i absolutely took it! Cruised the rest of the way to the line for the win.
Showed up expecting to get my arse kicked, and managed to win. Sweet! Congrats to Leah on her win, and Mike on his OA podium place!
Leah –
The Lorain Tri was very unique in the respect that it began with a swog. It’s a swim and a jog combined. Since the water was so rough, they deemed it unsafe for us to swim past the breakwall. So we had to swog inside of it. The swim went something like this…..swim, jog (in the water that is), swim, jog, swim, jog. Needless to say, this was my best swim yet! I came out of the water in 4th or 5th and left transition in 2nd. It took me about 15 mins. to finally catch the girl in 1st. I went into the last transition nervous since I’ve only run twice in the past four weeks. I was hoping that my foot would hold up. The run was really hard but I managed to stay away! A special thanks to Paul, Tammy and Jen who volunteered and to Bruce, Brad, Tom and Sandra (my coworker) who came to cheer!
Mike –
It was great to get out there after a stressful 3weeks lately. The lake was a little rough, but not enough to justify the change in swim course. I’ve never run so much in the swim leg! Getting thru 2 ft deep water is difficult, no matter how you do it! My legs were pretty tired by the time I reached T2, and then I got to chase Aussie on the bike and watch him slowly power away from me – nice job! The extra motivation helped, though, as my bike split was almost 2min faster than any previous, and my time was a PR by over a minute, (even adjusted for the shorter swim (if you can call it a swim!).
Filed under: 2010 |
spin / second sole multisport team 
Rock on the three amigo’s….
Nice work! What a funky swim! Perhaps Rick from NCN was a little spooked from Huntington…Tammi and Paul and Jen…BIG PROPS for being volunteers!!
Who gets to make those calls? Is it Rick, or can the Coast Guard overrule him?
Coast Guard i believe.
The ease of which they cancel swims these days is a little silly imo. There weren’t even any white caps.
Yea, I do believe it is the Coast Guard as well as that morning I was with Rick when someone asked if the swim was cancelled and his response was “there is a swim until I hear otherwise.”
Nice job out there….it was fun to volunteer and cheer on. And the swim was one of the funniest things I’ve seen!