Weekend Part I – Luray Triathlon

For all three of you who may have noticed, I haven’t posted since last Thursday (almost a week ago!).   That’s been due to a lack of internet, land telephone or even cell phone coverage where I’ve been staying since Friday.  But now that I’m back in the ‘real world’, I’ll try and get all caught up.  And we got lots of things to cover, but first…the Luray Triathlon.  With the Girl and other friends racing the Olympic distance, and a bunch of runner friends doing the Sprint relay, it left me to enjoy the weekend participating in the triathlon in the best possible way – by being a spectator.

With that said, here’s a bunch of pics I took on Saturday and Sunday.  As usual, you don’t get pics of the girl, but you do get lots of other random pics I took along the way.  First up, arrival at the lake:

Now, my bike is up there as I also had a ride to accomplish after the whole race had concluded.  So while she was getting all sorted out, I wandered down to the lake.

They were still getting the swim buoys all blown up when I stopped by.

And I even found the starting horn sitting on the dock…oh the fun I could have had with it…

After that, I headed up the stairs to the setup area, as the fog continued to lift off the lake.

As always, people were getting all ready to go, with body marking, bike marking, helmet marking, you name it – it got marked.

But soon it was time for some swim action, so back to the lake I went…

I find the above photo kinda funny…virtually every single person is looking at or holding their stopwatch, ready to hit start.  Though, from the below photo, it’s clear that some folks are a bit more ready than others.  As you can see, the horn has gone off and half the lead wave is already starting to swim, while the other half of the front line is still pressing buttons.  As a little tip, to avoid this problemo, I simply start my watch at the 10 second warning.  Much easier.

Off they went…

A short bit later after the Girl’s wave went, I walked down to the first buoy to watch the turn.  Suffice to say, this green cap below got pummeled.  The wave five minutes behind them caught up at the moment of the turn buoy, making an already ugly situation worse for poor green cap.

Following this, I had to high tail it out to the bike course…via walking.  I ended up walking about 1.5 miles down the road into the corn fields to get pictures of the bike course.  Though that did involve a few pretty nasty hills.  Here’s a few pictures I took, most of them came out pretty well:

Perhaps the best picture I caught all weekend of a guy getting chicked.  I love the expression on his face while she cruises on by all cool.

The below guys did not get chicked however…

Here’s a pic of me taking pics (courtesy of the fence keeping the cows at bay):

And here’s the picture I took above…below:

And if you were out there, I likely have a photo of you on the bike.  I took a LOT of pictures…of just about everyone out there.  If you were there (on the bike), and want a pic, shoot me you’re race number and what you were wearing, and I’ll shoot ya your pics.  I will say I was trying a lot of different camera settings, so some of them didn’t quite come out as well. 

I also have to hand it to Team Z folks, they were always smiling:

Soon enough though, I had to walk my ass all the way back through the hot sun and lonely roads.  But…at least I didn’t have to bike up this hill.

Oh wait…I had to walk up it instead.  And then later…I would have to bike up it.  Well nevermind then.

Eventually I found myself on the run course:

And then a short bit later…at the finish:

And then…I was done with my picture taking responsibilities.  Though, the next day I would come out and mostly do it all over again, except this time without the long bike course walk….which was nice.   Meanwhile, the girl was busy checking out here placement in the top five of her AG…

So with my photo taking responsibilities out of the way, it was time to get my workout out of the way.  So at a touch after noon, I headed out on my 65 mile ride…on Skyline drive…from Luray.

I was excited about this ride for two reasons.  One – it was a relatively short ride.  And two – it was my first Skyline (or really, ever outdoor) ride with a power meter.  My Quarq Cinqo had arrived the day prior (ahead of schedule…Thanks!), so I was interested to see how my numbers would look.

Anyway…I bumbled on out of the triathlon area and on my way towards Skyline drive.

I tried to take a picture of the power meter while still cycling, but despite my few attempts, I generally failed.

But I did manage to get a picture of my Garmin 705 showing power numbers…mostly cause that was all of 12 inches in front of me.

And later on, on the way back I also got a picture of the cows and me as I strolled on by:

Oh, and I forgot – I also successfully snapped a photo of the sign…leaving Skyline drive via bike for the last time this year (I hope…anyway).

And then…finally, the way back to the lake on country roads:

I’ll save all the details on power stuff for another post, but I was surprised to see my power levels as high as they were for a long of a ride as it was.  The ride was 3hrs and 25 minutes (for 6,000 feet of climbing), and my power distribution was fairly solid for being a Z2 ride with only one climb in Z3/low Z4:

The above picture is from Training Peaks, which has all sorts of pretty graphics.  For now, I’m pretty much in ‘data gathering’ mode with respect to training and power.  As it’s too late to really change anything with Ironman Canada less than two weeks away – I’m all about staying the course there.  That said, for those that are curious…here’s a bevy of numbers from the ride.  Some day I’ll explain them all…

But that day is not today…or tomorrow.  In the meantime, I’m off to bed.  Plus, I’ve got the rest of the weekend to tell ya about first…

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