2006 Pickerel Lake Triathlon

The 2nd annual Pickerel Lake Triathlon was another tremendous success. We ironed out a few bugs from last year and had a great and competitive race this year. One of the most obvious observations of this year's triathlon is the huge improvement in times over last year.

We started early Saturday morning but this year we positioned buoys out in the lake for the swimming leg instead of starting at the boat launch. The swimming leg was 0.33 miles and was brutal. Basically everyone agrees that it is a killer first leg because it exhausts the entire body and most people don't really train for it. I was heaving the entire time and it was a good 15 minutes on the bike before I felt like I had recovered from it.





The bike was a very hilly 9.5 miles but unlike last year, no one got lost thanks to Jason and Darren's chalk arrows everywhere.

The final leg of the race was a tough 5.2 mile run around pickerel lake.

As expected the fan support was great. Everyone from the cottage association that wasn't participating was there cheering and some other friends and relatives also came to keep us motivated.

Place:	Name:	Overall 2006:	Overall 2005:	Difference:
1	Dwayne	1:23:21
2	Jason	1:24:52	1:35:59	0:11:07
3	Darren	1:27:10	1:33:40	0:06:30
4	Jake	1:30:38	1:53:58	0:23:20
5	Mark VH	1:32:18	1:34:24	0:02:06
6	Randy	1:32:41	1:35:31	0:02:50
7	Paul	1:33:17	1:40:41	0:07:24
8	Evan	1:34:06	1:56:53	0:22:47
9	Dan Kuiper	1:43:47	1:56:57	0:13:10
10	Roger/Claire	1:46:51	2:00:30	0:13:39
11	Dan Kett	1:47:03	1:36:00	(0:11:03)
12	Doug	1:49:48	1:57:31	0:07:43
13	Terry	1:49:56	1:47:32	(0:02:24)
14	Steve	1:53:09	2:02:41	0:09:32
15	Sam/Seth	1:53:36
16	Marv	1:57:01	2:02:41	0:05:40
17	Anna	2:06:02
18	Linda	2:09:16
19	Sarah	2:12:09
20	Maria	2:26:00

Jason and Dwayne beat last year's fastest time. My time of 1:32:41 would have been 2nd last year but was 6th this year.

The main reasons for the improvements were:
1. Transition Time - many people took valuable time last year to change after swimming. My dad, Marv, Paul, and Steve all estimated close to 5 minutes of change time last year compared to 1-2 minutes this year.
2. Course Knowledge - last year about half of us took a wrong turn at some point on the bike course. My wrong turns only cost 30 seconds or so but Evan lost over 15 minutes and others lost 2-5 minutes.
3. Superior Bikes - Jake upgraded from a 1970's dirt bike to a nice mountain bike and improved his time by better than 20 minutes. Jason, Darren, and Dan all used road bikes and shaved more than 5 minutes off their bike times.
4. Better fitness - I think it is safe to say that just about all of us were in better shape this year than last. That is one of the best parts of this triathlon, it really promotes healthy living and hard work.

Here are the bike times:

Name:	Bike Time:	Pace(mph):
Darren	0:31:54	17.87
Jason	0:32:54	17.33
Randy	0:34:39	16.45
Dwayne	0:34:45	16.40
Jake	0:35:04	16.25
Evan	0:35:07	16.23
Dan Kuiper	0:35:22	16.12
Mark VH	0:36:03	15.81
Paul	0:38:35	14.77
Dan Kett	0:40:00	14.25
Sam/Seth	0:40:37	14.03
Maria	0:40:37	14.03
Roger/Claire	0:40:40	14.02
Doug	0:41:20	13.79
Steve	0:43:39	13.06
Terry	0:44:04	12.93
Marv	0:45:59	12.40
Sarah	0:48:46	11.69
Linda	0:54:46	10.41
Anna	0:57:35	9.90

The top 8 bike times were better than the fastest bike time from last year!

Here are the swim and run times:

Name:	Swim Time:
Dwayne	0:10:24
Dan Kett	0:10:36
Jason	0:11:09
Mark VH	0:12:06
Darren	0:12:15
Anna	0:12:27
Paul	0:12:37
Maria	0:13:39
Evan	0:13:41
Dan Kuiper	0:13:42
Jake	0:13:45
Steve	0:13:57
Randy	0:15:19
Linda	0:15:23
Doug	0:15:35
Marv	0:15:53
Sam/Seth	0:16:02
Sarah	0:17:42
Roger/Claire	0:18:42
Terry	0:18:57

Name:	Run Time:	Pace(min/mi):
Dwayne	0:38:12	0:07:21
Jason	0:40:49	0:07:51
Jake	0:41:49	0:08:02
Paul	0:42:05	0:08:06
Randy	0:42:43	0:08:13
Darren	0:43:01	0:08:13
Mark VH	0:44:09	0:08:16
Evan	0:45:18	0:08:29
Terry	0:46:55	0:08:43
Roger/Claire	0:47:29	0:09:01
Doug	0:52:53	0:10:10
Dan Kuiper	0:54:43	0:10:31
Marv	0:55:09	0:10:36
Steve	0:55:33	0:10:41
Anna	0:56:00	0:10:46
Dan Kett	0:56:27	0:10:51
Sam/Seth	0:56:57	0:10:57
Linda	0:59:07	0:11:22
Sarah	1:05:41	0:12:38
Maria	1:31:44	0:17:38

The only tragedy of the triathlon was Maria's run. Maria is in tremendous shape but was new to the race this year and didn't get a chance to see the course beforehand. She made it through the biking just fine but at the beginning of the run she wasn't sure where to go. She ended up taking the familiar bike route instead of just going around Pickerel lake and ended up running 9.5 miles instead of 5.2. She still finished with a big smile on her face and was able to run the whole way. Next year Ria.