Kinetic Half-Iron Triathlon Relay

On Saturday, I took a little break from road racing to do a 56-mile time trial as part of a half-iron triathlon relay team. The race was the Kinetic Half-Iron Triathlon, held at Lake Anna State Park near Fredericksburg, VA. Jean did this race last year as part of her build-up to the Louisville Ironman, but this year she was the “sponsor” of our relay team.

“Jean’s Boys” consisted of David Glover (swim), me (bike leg), and Rob Bell (run).

It was a blast, and our team took first place among 8 relay teams.

I was pretty nervous at the start of this event, even though it was strictly for fun. I’ve never done a time trial longer than 25 miles, and I had not ridden any of the course. David Glover, Jean’s triathlon coach, took fourth place overall last year and assured me that the course was mostly flat with a few big chainring hills.

How did it go? Pretty well. The legs felt good the whole time. I really had to hold back for most of the ride. Toward the end of the first lap I had a couple cramping type twinges, but I sucked down some endurolytes and the cramps stayed away. My basic strategy was to hold 75 to 80% of my threshold power on the flat, but push hard on any hills. I focused on riding the rolling hills with momentum by gathering speed on the descents and pushing a larger-than-usual gear at the base of the climb to hold onto the speed gained from the descent, then shifting down a gear at a time to keep the cadence in the sweet spot up the climb. This technique worked like a charm on every sequence of hills. I went ahead and let the power drift up on the climbs (beyond any specific target), reasoning that time gained on the uphills is worth more than time gained on the flats.

Credit for this hill-climbing technique goes to the Unholy Rouleur, who recently wrote about the “Fat Guy’s Zen of Hillclimbing.”

Looking at the power data, I'd say that the effort was paced almost perfectly. The peak 60 minutes was at the beginning, when I was passing tons of people, but the peak 10 minutes occurred an hour and 37 minutes into the ride. NP for the ride was 262 watts (IF of .87). Cadence was perfectly distributed as well, with the bulk of the time between 90-100 rpms and virtually no time below 80. My HR stayed between 155-165 bpm the entire race, until the final 2 miles, where I let it go to up to and beyond my threshold (168). In hindsight, I suspect I could have gone a little harder on the flats, but I was right to be conservative, given that I had never ridden the course and had never ridden a TT of this duration.

Some numbers:

Among the relays, our team was ranked first in swim, bike, and run -- for a sub-five hour finish.

Relay Results

My bike split of 2:31:04 would have been good enough for 13th place overall, out of 288 total participants.

Here are Jean’s pictures from the event.

Official pictures will eventually be here.

A special shoutout goes to fellow Squadra Coppi member, Adrianne Kroepsch, who WON the women’s event overall with an incredible time of 4:52:05 – breaking the significant 5-hour barrier.

She completed the bike in 2:39:06, a time that would have beat most men. Her run was even better: 1:33:54, which equates to a sub-7:15 mile pace. She was ranked first in the run among women and second in the bike.

She is READY for Ironman Brazil.