2007 Mighty Mite TRI (Sprint)

2007 was my 22nd Mighty Mite TRI in a row.  Richard C. and I did this race as our 1st TRI in 1986 and have not missed one since then.

Even though training for Ironman Louisville, and not doing anything special to get ready for this race, I won the 50-54 age division which had 18 competitors.

The swim was okay ... I felt good on the bike ... but I crashed and burned coming into T2 due to not realizing where the dismount line was until too late and had to really crank down on the brakes & my TT bike (1st time racing it in a TRI) has very good front brakes (a lot of front brake bias in NASCAR terms) which caused the front wheel to skid out from under me while I was standing on the left pedal barefooted getting ready to step off the bike ...

But while the course workers were asking me if I was okay ... I grabbed the bike and ran it to the rack & went on ... only to have an unrelated side pain (which had last occurred in 1988 in a 10K) that caused me to miss my goal of going under 1:10:00.

As a 54 year old, out of about 300 triathletes, I was 12th overall on the bike and 1st overall on transition time ... (even with the crash)

In addition to the hills ... there was a headwind on the bike ... but still averaged over 23mph -> so my Ironman training from www.cruciblefitness.com is paying off in ways that I did not expect. 

By the numbers on the Bike

Power:        255 watts

Heart rate:  144 bpm

Cadence:    87 rpm

Speed:       23.0 mph