RR: West Kennebunk Fireman Sprint

West Kennebunk Fireman Sprint
Kennebunk, ME

.33 mile swim
16.6 mile bike
3.25 mile run (advertised as 3.2/3.3 and split as a 5k)

Swim – 6:46 (7th)
T1 - :57
Bike – 40:17, 24mph (3rd)
T2 - :47
Run – 21:13, 6:31/mi (13th)
Total – 1:09:57
Place – 4th Overall / 3rd Overall Male / 1st Age Group

Report
I’ll do my best to keep this one on the shorter side…

I always do this race, regardless of what else I have going on in my season. I work in the elementary school in town, I coach the high school swim team, and I live in a town nearby so it’s a great opportunity for me to race in the community.

The sprint field is always pretty strong at the very top here as the USAT Northeast Junior Development Series uses this as their final race of the season and some of the top junior athletes in the country show up.

The swim went off without anything special going on. I don’t love racing in the ocean, but things still went pretty smoothly. As did everything in T1.

The bike leg of the race flew by. Part of that is that I ride these roads all the time in training and part is that I was really moving. Fast enough that I found myself all alone by mile 6, sort of strange since I didn’t start in the first wave of the Sprint. Eventually I was joined by the top 3 Olympic distance racers who’d started a half hour before me but had obviously taken a more roundabout route. I did my best to keep those three a few bike lengths ahead of me and use them to sort of set the pace. It worked. I averaged 24mph – a good split on this course.

Coming in to T2 I was feeling decent. Then things all fell apart for a few seconds. Before the race I’d forgotten to attach the backs of my shoes to my bike with elastics. So as I went for the flying dismount a shoe caught the ground and came off. I stopped to grab it just as the other shoe came off. Fantastic. It wasn’t ideal, but overall I actually made it through pretty quickly. And lesson learned, I will not forget to secure my shoes with elastics next time.

This run course kills me ever year. It always has and until I seriously improve my run, I doubt that will ever change. It’s usually hot and today was no different. It’s longer than normal and for someone with the run as a relative weakness that’s never a good thing. And it’s also just hilly enough to really sting the legs. At 1.25 miles I was caught by Stephen Wright who’d actually started 3 minutes back. Anyone that’s read my race reports this year knows this kid can fly. He was 15th at Junior Nationals, a 4 time champion of the USAT Northeast Junior Development Series and was 2nd overall at Timberman last weekend. So any chance at a win was gone. Still, I tried to jump on and run with him for awhile. I figured every step he dragged me closer to the finish was one I didn’t have to run alone (at a slower pace). It worked for all of .75 miles. Then the elastic snapped and he was gone. At about that point I started to feel like I was going to throw up – an all too common feeling this season. I’m not sure if it’s from the efforts I’m putting in or from my Infinit formula. I’m leaning toward the Infinit and emailed them about it weeks ago, but haven’t heard back. I think I’ll just race with water the rest of the year and see how that goes.

I managed to cross the line 2nd, though I’d later be bumped to 4th overall and 3rd overall male as I was run down by one of the country’s top junior females (just off a podium finish at junior nationals).

Overall it was a pretty solid race. Not my best of the year, but the result was good and I think that tells me a lot about where I am this year. It’s nice to go into races knowing that you can do well without your best stuff. Obviously I’d love to go into every race with my best but that’s never going to happen, especially when you start racing almost every weekend.

Post race was nice. I was able to talk with a bunch of people. Kat and Jeff Donatello of the Pumpkinman Triathlon Festival had made the trip to watch the race, I saw a few of my swimmers and their parents, talked to a couple of the juniors for awhile and so on. That’s part of the reason I like this race – it’s so local for me that it takes on a bit of a different feel than most other races. While I enjoy the race itself, it’s also nice to be out racing in the community and seeing others from around here doing the same.

Up Next: Pumpkinman Sprint