Today was the last of the Clermont Sprint Tri series of 4 races. Fred Sommer has been doing events at the Clermont waterfront for over 20 years with great success. This race boasted over 500 competitors today and the organization was great. I arrived early, got my packet, and racked my bike. Ran into some old friends and found Ken Junkins, James Mayer, and Will Hathaway were all there today. These 3 friends train together and are very fast and all 3 are in my age group. I thought to myself, well, 4th place is open. I brought the Moulton SPEED to it's first hilly course and with so many people there it attracted a bit of attention. Kevin Casey was there too and he started in the third wave while I was in the sixth. Swim was great though it was a little hard seeing the finish looking toward the rising sun. I took off on the bike a bit cautiously, looking forward to seeing how the Moulton handled the hills. I was very happy with my performance, averaging 18.2 mph for the 12 miles and hitting 37.6 on the big downhill (followed by a slow uphill). My runs keeping getting better even with the hills there and I ran a 27:11, good for 8:45 mile splits. I finished in 4th out of 9 in my age group with a time of 1:15:28 behind Ken, Will, and James. Ken's time was 1:03:01 (30th OA!) with Will and James getting 1:04:04 and 1:04:07 respectively. They are very fast! Kevin struggled on the big hill on the bike but had a solid finish and was quite pleased. A great day all around!
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| It pays to get up early! |
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| Lots of people. |
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| I'm ready! |
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| Happy finish! |
