Park City Olympic 2010

I came into this race off of my first real big block of training for Kona. I had put in 3 weeks of 20+ hour training. The training has been going very well. I have been handling the bigger volume decently. I have experienced some aches and pains, but nothing has been severe. I did go through a little stretch of overreaching a bit and I noticed that I was having a very hard time hitting key workouts. This lack of ability to hit the tempo threshold type of workouts is a clear sign of muscle fatigue. So, I had backed things off a bit leading into this race to let my muscles recover a bit. I felt ready to roll on race morning.
Every season is different. This season, my pool swim fitness is the best it's ever been. My bike is a little off but my run is the best it's been as well. When I look back at my off-season, it all makes sense. I had a very good run focus in the off-season. My swim had started off the year a little behind where I thought it should be, so we bumped things up in the water. The result was my endurance speed is the deepest it's ever been. My bike is a bit different story. I had to put my bike training on the back burner at the beginning of the year as I was focusing on building my new businesses: Personal Training Professionals of Southport (www.ptpsouthport.com) and Lifesport Coaching (www.lifesportcoaching.com). In addition, I usually start my racing season in late March. However, this year I did not do my first triathlon until the middle of June. These factors have contributed to my bike fitness coming in at a little lower level. This is not such a bad thing, as my main focus this year is to race in Kona in October.
Now about the race: the swim was a bit choppier then last year. This slowed things down a little bit. I felt pretty good once I got going and I came in @ 19:35. This was 31 seconds slower then last year, but comparing it to other swimmers and the conditions, it was actually a faster swim.
I went through T1 quickly and got right onto my Orbea Ordu. I had my powermeter again and I put it on average watts so I could dial in a consistent effort on the flat course. I pushed hard and watched my power climb for the first 3 laps. I slowly built my power output. As I was finishing the 4th lap, I noticed that my wattage was starting to slip. It was not a drastic slip but over the last two laps I lost 5 watts from my average I was holding on the first 3+ laps. My net power comparison was 7 normalized watts lower in 2010 then 2009. I came off the bike in 2nd place and I knew I was going to have to put out a serious run to try to close the gap. In 2009, I had a pretty decent lead off the bike, so I was able to shut things down on the 2nd loop of the run. This race was a lot different. I had a 40 second deficit coming off of the bike.
I thought I could pull back 10 seconds per mile on the run. However, as the run progressed, I was not making any gains on the leader. I hit the turnaround for lap 2 and I went as hard as I could. I finally started to close the gap a little. I got the within 20 seconds, but that was all I could do. I ended up coming across the line 22 seconds down. My racing philosophy has always been to give everything I have and always feel good about my race after I cross the finish line. I can say without hesitation that I gave everything I had. Results: http://www.triandduit.com/webforms/tad_ResultsDetail.aspx?rf=PCMossmanTri2010.rdb&distanceid=1&Event=Park+City+Mossman+Triathlon&distance=Triathlon