A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Pueblo to join my brother in the Addicts-to-Athletes benefit triathlon. The entire event was staged indoors at the Pueblo Athletic Club. That’s right, all inside. It is November, after all!
I mentioned Addicts-to-Athletes back in July when I did my HITS race report. I ran the last few miles of that one with Rob Archuleta. His is a great organization doing fantastic work and a benefit for them was an easy decision to make.
Since you can’t have dozens of athletes in a club all at the same time, we were broken into groups of four to six for each event.
Another novel feature about this race was that it was in reverse order so instead hitting the water first, we went to the upper level of the club and got on treadmills. All events were time, rather than distance based so that meant 20 on the treadmill. Your result was the distance you covered.
Despite having run slowly for the last several weeks, I still managed an 8:30 pace without difficulty and the 20 minute leg went by quickly.
After leaving the treadmills behind, it was back down to the lower level of the club where a group of spin bikes stood ready for the second stage. They were geared very low so I was truly spinning and with almost no resistance. As a result, I ended up going 16.8 miles for the 30 minute ride. No question, on the road or even on my trainer, the distance would have been much less.
Finally, the third and final leg was a 10 minute swim in the 20 yard pool. This was an enjoyable experience. Unlike the chlorine that is prevalent in just about any pool, the lanes at PAC actually use saline. As a result, was not as harsh and I also enjoyed greater buoyancy. My Garmin 910 assumed I was swimming in a 25 yard pool, but once I manually corrected, I found I swam 560 yards.
None of this felt like much of a race, but I was actually happy with that. At this time of year, there is definitely more benefit in doing a good workout without going out and killing it like I might in a race.
Since this was such a different event, I don’t have a review per se. However, everything went smoothly. Transitions were fixed at 2 minutes and the schedule was adhered to closely. I even got a cool orange t-shirt for my trouble!
If you ever are looking for a fun way to get a little extra training in during the off-season, I’d recommend this.
Thanks for reading.
Final Numbers
20 Minute Run: 2.36
30 Minute Bike: 16.8
10 Minute Swim: 560 yards
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