Giant Eagle Multi-Sports Festival Olympic Triathlon Redux

Last Sunday was the Giant Eagle Multi-Sports Festival Olympic Triathlon.

To start, there was the 4:00 am wake up call. As I looked at facebook that morning, I was reminded that there were people just getting home from the night before.

This race was different because it was a point-to-point Olympic race, which meant I needed to have 3 transition bags packed for the race. I had a swim bag with my wetsuit, goggles, and pre-race essentials. I had a T1 bike bag with my helmet, sunglasses, and shoes. And a T2 running bag with running shoes and nutrition.

Much to Anna’s dismay, she was made official team car driver. This meant she was up at 4:45 so she could take me and PK to the start of the race and drop off our T2 bags.

(Editor’s Note: This ungodly hour would have come easier if I hadn’t had to keep telling the junior Team MoZo members to go to sleep instead of giggling about their camp out on the floor with Aunt K. Thank you again for the great hospitality and the babysitting.)

Otherwise, it was a normal race morning: banana baby food, cliff bar, banana, and sports drink. I was a little sore, so I started stretching from the minute I woke up until the swim.

Since the race was point-to-point, we had racked bikes the night before at T1 in Alum Creek. We got to transition around 5:45, which was great because we beat the shuttle buses bringing the rest of the athletes from the hotels and gave us about 20 minutes in transition with very few people and an empty port-a-pot line. The turnout for this first race was good at little less than 1000 people.

Due to the hot summer, the debate started early in the week whether the race would be wetsuit legal or not. On Saturday, the Race for the Cure female tri that day had been wetsuit legal at 77 degrees, but as we were racking our bikes that night, the water was 84 degrees. Arriving Sunday morning, the first announcement was that the water was 84.9 degrees and not wetsuit legal.

My wetsuit has become a security blanket of sorts because it adds buoyancy and speed, so I was curious how mentally I was going to handle the swim.

Another interesting pre-race announcement was that the Olympic swim had been switched to a 2-lap half mile loop due to recent deaths in the lake. WTF? Too much information. Just simply “we changed the course” would have sufficed.

I actually got a practice swim in for this race and it tuned out to be a good chance to stretch. The water was like bath water and a wetsuit would have been a complete hindrance, so mentally I was fine for the moment.

Also, the water was really shallow. At the inside line of buoys there was no point at which a person could not stand. Even at the furthest out buoys it was only about 8 feet, so it was a very comfortable swim for people who focus on the depth of the water.

The pros went off first at this race, and both men and women just flew in the water. The first male swimmer finished his mile in about 18 minutes and was so smooth. My age group wave was the 5th in the water and slightly smaller than normal with less than 40 athletes.

The swim started out a little rough, as I got off course and started swimming to middle because I had spotted the wrong buoy. Once back on course, things smoothed out and the swim went well. I was out of the water at about 26 minutes, which put me 4th out of the water for my age group.

T1 was uneventful except for a little trouble I had clicking into my pedals on my bike. Also, I did not get my goggles in their designated bag, and they now have been donated to HFP racing.

The bike was fast. It was 25 miles that appeared to have a slight roll to it, but most of the ride was downhill to downtown Columbus. I averaged over 24 mph for 25 miles and finished the bike in about 1:03. Fifteen miles of the race were straight down High Street, and were handled exceptionally well by HFP and local law enforcement.




(Editor’s note: Except early on at T2 when the professionals were coming in and couldn’t see the turn because there was one person just standing there doing nothing. The spectators were yelling at the bikers to turn, until finally somebody came up with a flag – that was waved unenthusiastically – and eventually some more cones. A couple people missed the turn and had to back track. I can tell you I would be pissed with $30,000 on the line.
Also, someone wiped out turning from High onto Nationwide and an ambulance flew past us. I kept telling myself that it was way too early to be Scott, but was nonetheless relieved to hear it was a pink helmet. Guy did end up carrying his bike the rest of the course into transition and looked like he just had major road rash on his shoulder, but sucks to be him.)

On the entertaining side, I rode near a guy dressed as Aquaman for his kids, which was funny and had to be hot with race temps in the high 80’s. I was further helped out on the ride by my cheering section of Morgan and Zoe, Mom and Dad, Sister and Brother-in-law, and PK’s family.

T2 was great practice for the Full Rev as our run stuff was hanging on hooks by numbers in a tent, which you had to find and then change. I was able to handle T2 in under a minute, probably helped by the fact that I forgot my race belt

The run was hot, but I felt good. I wore my racing flats and went sock free for the second time. I started to get blisters at about 4.5 miles, but overall the sockless run went well. I was able to average 7:00/miles or a little under for the 10k run. Once again the family was a big help as I got to the finishing chute and finished off with a strong last mile. I came out of the run with two major blisters on my arches, but they have subsided already.




My final time was 2:14 and change which was good for 5th in my age group. I was al little annoyed with myself as there was only 45 seconds between 3rd and 5th and I felt I could have made that up on the course and wish I would have pushed harder.



Overall, HFP did a great job with the race and I would recommend it next year.

Plus, there is something for everyone with a 5k, sprint tri, super sprint for women, duathlon, and aquabike.

No racing this week. I need to have a big training week.

(Editor’s Note: For those that may or may not have caught my facebook post while we waited for Scott’s gear to make its way from Alum Creek…There was a female athlete waiting in the same area - obviously a professional – and a spectator was asking her a lot of questions about her EXTREMELY expensive looking bike. He wondered why she didn’t have a speedometer/odometer and how did she know if she was going fast enough. “If someone is in front of me…I’m not going fast enough.” A pretty ballsy quote. Until we looked at the race photos and she’s the one breaking the tape at the finish line. She can be as ballsy as she wants.)