Turtle Trot Race Report

First, I have to comment on the weather it is July 18th, it's supposed to be hot. At 9am the temp was 59° F and it was overcast. At 10 am it had gotten up to 61° F and was still overcast. This is summer not spring, not fall, 60° F is not summer even in Minnesota.

As to the day, we kept the normal Turtle Trot rotation, 5k run, 1/2 mile swim and 10 mile bike. This marked Karyn's and my fourth year participating in it. Ben kept the same agenda, course debrief, national anthem and a prayer. It is the right way to start things off.

The run went better than in the past. I ran a 27:12 5k, not anywhere near my best 5k time but it was my best Turtle Trot 5k time and it was my best 5k in over 5 years. Granted I only run one 5k a year but it still was nice to run at least a bit faster. I did have some ankle pain about 2 miles in which seemed to affect my push-off and I know it slowed me down in the last mile (along with just being tired). The achilles did not bother me which was very good. The course is an out and back with no real hills just a few gentle ups. I went out fairly hard and I hit the turnaround in 13:15 so no negative split but overall not a bad effort.

Next up was the swim, the lake water was down which wasn't a problem but the air temp was and I can say that the water temp did take my breath away. It took me a few minutes to deal with it, after that it was ok, I do think the water temp was close to the air temp, I figure it was a swimming ice bath. The nice thing with the Turtle Trot swim is that you can touch bottom, which allows you to walk and swim your way through the 1/2 mile. I tried to swim but probably only swam about 1/2 of it. It was a bit choppy and the return loop was against some small waves which made it a bit more difficult as they kept crashing into my head. I came out of the water at 45:09 and proceeded to get the shoes on for the bike.

I had used my Garmin for the run but I didn't think it would be good to take it into the lake. I put it back on for the bike and it was nice to see the mileage during the bike as my bike speedometer-odometer battery was dead. I headed out on the bike, adjusted my gloves and then sped my mountain bike around the course. I did have my cross tires on which helped but an investment in or rental of a road bike would be a big plus. I don't think I ever will get one but I do know it would help. I got done in something like 1 hour and 35 minutes, my Garmin had the bike at 47:01 and it had the distance at 11 miles. So I lost 3 minutes in the last transition which is probably about right as I had to dry off, get my shoes on, grab my bike and go and to be honest I didn't rush it.

So overall not a bad day, our thanks to Ben and Kirsten for asking us back one more year and all of the volunteers for again making it a great event. It is always a lot of fun.