The 2021 Steelman Olympic Triathlon race was my 6th Steelman Olympic race in addition to one Steelman Sprint distance. I was supposed to race last year but with Covid I deferred to this year. The race is still very organized since being taken over by Dave Michener from Dale Winteroff. The only real difference with the race is that the swag is not as good as it used to be. We used to get nice sweatpants, hoodies, and beer coolers. Now we just get a T-shirt which is pretty much the same shirt we got in 2018.
This race is a very well attended local race usually attracting around 1000 triathletes. This year was around 800, which was probably a little lower due to Covid and the Delta version coming in hot. You can always expect some strong competition here and that includes the 50-54 age group which I am in.
This year I decided skip the roughly two hours of driving from Allentown to Nockamixon on Saturday to get packet pickup. I am so glad I did. I got down to the course at about 5:10am and got a very close parking spot by the little marina bathroom. This provided more than enough time to prep my bike and gear with stickers, bib numbers, etc. I even had time to take a little nap while the sun tried come up.
My transition spot was right in the main aisle and near the bike in/out arch. We had a decent amount of room this year. It wasn’t as much as they made it out to be in the pre-race meeting, but it was sufficient. My tri-buddy Andy, who I hadn’t seen since Steelman 2018 was 4 places down from me, so we had some time to chat a bit before the race. The last time we raced here, we had raced side-by-side during the swim and bike. When we hit the run Andy moved ahead since he is a much faster running than I am. He had also done Musselman, but oddly we never ran into each other the whole time up there.
This year they had no swim warm-up which was very disappointing. As I made my way to the swim start I saw a bunch of people warming up so I snuck in for a quick dip before some girl came down and yelled at us. The swim was a no wetsuit swim this year with a supposed water temperature of 80 deg F. The water temperature had been 75 all week and even the night before, then all of a sudden it is 80. Yeah right. I think the USAT official that took the temp must have stuck it in 2 inches of water along the shoreline. Anyway, I got use my speedsuit which I have only used once before.
The Swim
The swim was a self-seeded rolling start. I lined up in the 30-35(or 40) minute group towards the front. Andy lined right behind me and we launched off the dock to start our swim. I started my swim out slow and easy since we didn’t get a proper warm-up. It didn’t take much to get used to not having a wetsuit. Most of my swimming in the pool is without so this should not be much different. There was a slight headwind going out which added a little bit of ripple to the water. I took a couple mouthfuls while sighting here and there. The swim is angled nicely so you don’t get the sun in your eyes which had now broke free from behind the earlier clouds.
I never looked at my watch the whole swim so I had no idea how I was doing. The swim was a very enjoyable one and was able to settle into a nice steady stroke. I made the turn and looked forward to a little tailwind on the way back. There was much more room on the way back which ended causing me to sight the buoys from the other side. I finally realized it and corrected myself. I don’t think it made too much difference though. My Garmin track looks horrible, but I don’t think it was as bad as that looks.
The Bike
I had a pretty quick 1:37 transition and off onto the bike. The hill out of the marina is a steep one. Especially when all the blood is in your upper body from the swim. Once past that I tried to settle into a steady pace and try to eliminate and excess efforts. Due to some bad road conditions on the on bridge the bike was also shortened this year by a couple miles. The beauty of that was the bridge was at the bottom of a pretty good hill, so that increased the speeds a bunch.
I finished the bike in around 1:06. That is roughly around 10 minutes less than previous years but most of that is due to the shortened course. I averaged around 20.1 MPH. In 2019 I had averaged around 19.7. A little faster but that again could be due to less climbing required.
The Run
My run was a little slower than previous years(53:44 – 8:39/mi), but I felt like I was pushing as hard as I could. My buddy Andy was behind me but was gaining on me quickly. I had found out afterwards that he had a bit of a panic moment in the swim and had lost some time to me there. My plan was to try to keep him from passing me before the finish as my goal. I managed to do that but was really hurting on the last bit of the run.
I crossed the mat at the same time as another guy which caused the race timing also got screwed up. Andy came in right behind me too, so I managed to just hold him off from passing me. Regardless he had a much faster run that I did.
