Philadelphia Insurance Triathlon Race Report

I think this was the 4th running of the Philadelphia Insurance Triathlon and I wanted to have a go at this race since the first time we visited Philly. The race is all in and around the Schuylkill River and the Philly Art Museum. For anyone that doesn’t know the area it has become synonymous with Rocky’s training run and victory dance up the museums steps in the Rocky movie. It is also a key feature of the Philadelphia Triple Crown cycle race which takes in several laps of the area. I went for a run along Kelly Drive the first time Wendy and I visited Cadence's Philly Centrre and I must admit I fell in love with the area from the start.

The race was on Sunday so we drove up to Philly Saturday arriving in the early afternoon. We wheeled Ben out and went to packet pickup which was situated in a big marquee. There were a few stores and local interest groups with stands and Cadence had set up their own store and had a couple of mechanics on hand to look at people’s bikes. We bumped into Matt Heitmann from Cadence who congratulated me on the vote and he gave me a little bit of free advice for the bike course.

After packet pickup we checked into the hotel, which was only a few miles from the race start, and I got my bike out and cycled back to the marquee to preview the course. After scribbling down a really rough Cue Sheet I set out. I won’t talk too much about the course until the actual race report but during the preview ride I was constantly missing turns and back tracking. It was difficult because the actual race course went the wrong way down many of the one way streets, which is clearly fine when the roads are closed but is not so ideal on a Saturday afternoon in heavy traffic.

Mission accomplished I returned to the hotel where we had a fairly relaxing evening and managed to get to sleep for 10 o’clock with the alarm set for 4:30am. Apparently our 12lbs alarm clock went off at 3:30 but I woke to the bedside alarm at 4:30am. By the time we had fed Ben and got everything back into the car we got to the race site for about 5:30. There was plenty of parking but about a 10 min walk down to transition at the river’s edge. By the time I got there all the usual long queues had formed, e.g. body marking and porta-potties. The body marking went pretty quickly and I found myself inside the huge transition area.

I had registered very late through Cadence so was assigned one of the standby race numbers. My rack was therefore way at the back but when I tried to find my rack it became clear that my number was missing. I asked an official and she told me to rack anywhere. The freedom to rack your bike wherever you like felt absolutel great. There were a couple of spare racks that had no bikes on them so I sauntered over fully intending to take a whole rack to myself but unfortunately another official asked me to go and join some other people who were in the same boat as me.

With transition set up I gave my bag to Wendy who stuffed it into the vortex that is the tray underneath the stroller/pushchair and I went to find a bus to the swim start. This race had an upriver swim start and then a straight swim down the river to transition. When I got to the swim start I had a warm up swim for 10 minutes and the water was warm but murky. I got out, put my flip-flops in the supplied bag along with my body glide and handed in to be taken back to transition. It was then that I realised that I had left my goggles in the bag. I went back to the bus and asked if I could have my bag back which really upset the girl who was collecting the bags. After huffing and puffing a bit she retrieved my bag and announced to everyone waiting that once you had handed in your bag there was no getting it back. After I retrieved my goggles I went back to the other bus to hand it in rather than face her wrath again.

Swim 26:50 (452/1892 overall)

I was in the water a full 10 minutes before the wave started and ended up treading water. Luckily my wetsuit is really buoyant so I didn’t waste too much energy. The highlight of the wait was when I turned in the water and found myself staring at a dead fish as it floated very slowly down the river. According to the race website there had been something in the river that had killed a lot of fish recently but the water was now ‘safe’, unfortunately this particular ‘floater’ must have been leftover from then.


The swim felt a lot longer than 1500m and that was probably because there were no turns to break it up. I felt like I pushed fairly hard during the swim and the time was again an improvement on my previous races but I cannot understand why quite so many people are still able to put in a faster swim split than me. I know that I am not a natural swimmer, and that I do not have a swim background, but with all the training I have put in and the improvements in my swim stroke I would have thought my swim might have been more on a par with my run, in terms of where I sit in relation to the rest of the field. Obviously the swim in an Olympic distance event has far more influence on the overall time than a swim in an Ironman as it makes up a much bigger percentage of the overall race distance, so I am not going to worry about my swim until after Lake Placid.

I exited the water feeling comfortable although I was a little concerned about some twinges in my calves which may have been the onset of cramp.

T2 2:47

I was about to say that this was a very slow transition but then I remembered that there was quiet a run to get to the bike and then to the exit so perhaps it isn’t as bad as I first thought.

Bike 1:03:28 (41/1892)

Back in my comfort zone I had another very strong bike which put a real smile on my face. I thought the course was great. You head out of transition on a road that follows the river bank. It had a great surface and you were soon able to pick up speed. In order to wipe the smile off your face the course designer then sent you up the first of one of four climbs per loop. This first one is fairly longish climb which gets steeper just before it peaks. I managed to stay aero for the first half of the climb and I found myself starting to overtake a number of people. I was wave 3 and the pros, men 55+, F45+ and Athenas had all started ahead of me, along with all those 30-34 men who could swim faster than me and that dead fish.

Following Matt Heitman’s advice I pushed hard on the descent and found myself really flying down the hill and overtook quiet a few people on the descent. I concentrated on carrying that speed back out onto MLK (the riverside road) and because I had pre-ridden the course I knew that I could safely go flat out on nearly all of the descents except for the last one before transition. A few miles further on we crossed the river and headed back toward the city on Kelly Drive it was here that one of the pros burst my bubble by flying past me on what was presumably his second loop (not sure who he was because it was a long time before another pro passed me). There were 2 more climbs on the way back down to the Art Museum the first of which was a steady incline which could be ridden fairly easily whilst aero and the second, shorter steeper, lemon hill climb which was just about short enough to be powered up without slowing too much.

You then had a wonderful descent back out onto Kelly Drive before you went back across the river just behind the museum. Heading back up toward transition there is one last kick in the teeth as you veer off for another climb and then there is a very steep descent just prior to bike dismount. This is the only descent I took carefully as it ends in a blind corner and is much narrower than the other descents. I was then faced with repeating it all over again before I could come into bike dismount.

Despite the large numbers out on the course I only saw one pair cheating. They were both members of a local tri club and the one guy was a few inches off the wheel of the guy in front as they weaved through the other cyclists. I made some comment about a team time trial as I overtook them and if I hadn’t of been totally blitzing them on the bike leg it would have pi@#ed me off seeing such blatant disregard for the rules and the spirit of the race.

I was still feeling pretty strong at the start of the second loop despite having pushed the pace. I must point out that again I was having ‘watch’ issues and had no idea what my heart rate was doing although I felt OK. I was now faced with a much more congested race course as a number of other waves were now out of the water. There were bodies all over the road and I found myself having to weave in out of people who, like a lot of drivers on the road, could not grasp the concept of keeping to the right when not overtaking. The descents were particularly exciting as I flew down the hill yelling at the top of my voice ‘bike left, bike left’. By the time I got back to transition the crowds were really big and there was a great atmosphere. I perhaps took the dismount ever so slightly slower than normal mindful that I could make a complete idiot of myself if I screwed up the flying dismount.

T2 1:23

I then had a long, long run back to my rack with my bike which probably means that this was actually a pretty slick transition. I was motivated by the Cadence mechanics and support crew whose tent was on the edge of the transition area and I could hear them all cheering for me which helped a lot and stopped me from dilly-dallying.

Run 44:08 (174/1892)(7:07 min miles)

I started the run feeling pretty good. The course was two out and backs from transition on the same very flat road that we had been cycling on. As I left transition, and the crowds, I began to take stock. My legs were turning over nicely and I felt comfortable. There was no-one about and I started to fantasize that I was clear of the rest of my age group and all I had to do was to keep going like this until the finish line time where I could expect much glory, tea and medals.

Before I hit the first turn around someone went charging pass me, luckily his leg said 35-39 so I decided he must be some freaky, world class runner who had recently turned to triathlon and let him go. I then reeled in one female runner and made the first turn around. On out and back courses this is the moment of truth, are you going to see the entire field 20 yrds behind you, all running sub 5 minute miles, and about to blast passed you, or is the road going to be deserted and you could, if you wanted, now walk the rest of the course and still get the glory, tea and medals.

What I saw was a fairly deserted course and I felt like I had quite a bit of breathing room. I next reeled in a 55+ runner called Terry who seemed to know absolutely everybody and I am pretty sure he was a member of a local tri club. Seemingly every runner that went by in the other direction called out his name. By the time I got back to transition I was just over a third of the way through the run but was starting to feel a bit sick in the pit of my stomach. I knew I couldn’t have gone any quicker at that point and concentrated on keeping going. I then got passed by another older male runner and headed out on the next out and back.

The wheels started to fall off a little bit and my feet, which were squeezed into some different trainers than I usually wear, started to protest. I must have slowed because I was passed by a couple of women and then 2 of my age groupers went whizzing by me. Perhaps I had gone harder than I thought on the bike because a flat course like this I would have hoped to better my 43:58 at Mooseman which was on a relatively hilly course.

Still by the time I crossed the line I had a bit of a second wind and the sicky feeling had gone. I felt comfortable and I could have kept running at that pace for much longer given a bigger pair of shoes.

Overall 2:18:38 (120/1892)(15/180 in my age group)

I am very satisfied with my race. I have placed better in my age group in the past but never when competing with a field of this caliber. This is a new PB for me and is nearly a minute faster than the previous PB at the Nation’s Tri which had a virtually flat bike course. The race was also a qualifier for the 2008 National Age Group Championships for which I think I now qualify.

The swim was sound and the bike leg kicked ass. My bike split was even better than a few pros, including my esteemed coach, Holden (I have to come clean and admit that he managed to break his saddle and had to stop for some repair work. He still managed to finish 9th out of the Pros but was just out of the money). The run was OK but then again I have not targeted this distance of race and I think I could have kept going a lot further which bodes well for Placid (whether I could do another 20 miles we will have to wait and see).

The location of the race was wonderful, great backdrop, good roads, large crowd and a sense of occasion. It was also a chance to meet up with a lot of the Cadence Staff, some of whom I hadn’t seen since the selection weekend in October. We managed to catch up with the New York centre Director of Performance, Mikael Hanson, who we had not seen since last year. It turns out he also has an 8 week old baby so many congratulations to you and your wife and I hope you get to have a good nights sleep soon. We also met up with Brian Walton and his kids and said hello again to Todd Parker, a really nice bloke and another top coach. Thanks to all the guys in the mechanics tent who really spurred me on in transition and thanks to the Cadence mechanic who helped me out after the preview ride on Saturday by fixing my front derailleur.

The other Cadence athletes at the race were great and I hadn’t realized before the race but Mary Lou, the other Cadence Kona Challenge finalist was also racing. We managed to say hello twice while out on the run course and then had a good chat after the race. To round off the day nicely we met up with Kelsey and her dad. We met Kelsey at the New York Kona challenge event. She was one of the ten quarter-finalists to be invited back for a second day of testing. She is a very gifted athlete and I suspect the only reason that she didn’t make the top six is because she was so much younger than the rest of us and with her natural talent will almost certainly go on to great things in the future.


I also want to say thanks to the guys at the finish chute who introduced themselves. They had been at the selection weekend in New York as well and had also voted for me and it was really nice of them to say hello. Another very nice lady came up to Mary Lou and me as we were chatting after the race and told us both how much she enjoyed the blogs. I am really sorry I cannot remember your name so please do not forget to email as I know you said you were racing Lake Placid as well.

By the time we left the race site the three of us were beginning to tire rapidly but we just had time to say hello to Holden. He was disappointed but still very upbeat about his race which is a great testament to his character. We made plans to get together next weekend for some training and testing and his parting salvo was to let both Wendy and I know that the next couple of weeks or so would be tough in terms of training but at the same time very important for the Ironman.