Lake Metro Parks Pirate Triathlon Review

 The Lake Metro Parks Pirate Triathlon is a personal favorite race that I look forward to every year.  Fairport Harbor Beach makes for a great scenic location for a race.  The race offers a standard swim triathlon as well as a kayak triathlon.  The bike and run courses are shared between swimmers and kayakers making for a larger field of participants on the course.  The biggest wild card factor of this race is always the conditions of Lake Erie.  Some years there are 3-4 foot swells while other years the water is nice and calm.  I have learned over the years of competing in this race to bring two kayaks to this race and use the one best suited to the lake conditions.  This year Lake Erie was nice and calm which meant faster less table kayaks could be used.  I chose to go with my Stellar S18S Multi Sport Kayak.  The weather conditions were humid with heavy cloud cover and temperatures in the low 70’s.

After staging my bike in the transition area and my kayak on the beach it was time to race.  The horn went off and we hit the water for the kayak leg.  I got into my kayak and started to paddle.  I immediately noticed a problem with my paddle.  I had set the angle of my paddle incorrectly.  I usually set it to a 45-50 degree angle to the right but instead set it to the left.  I had to stop and reset my paddle to the proper angle.  This led to an extremely slow start.  I pushed extra hard and before long I was up to the front of the pack.  At the turnaround buoy I cut inside of a kayak in front of me that made a wider turn and made a clean pass.  I was now in 3rd place just behind the two leading kayaks.  I continued to push hard and made up a little more ground.  I hit the beach about 20 seconds behind the two leaders who were also paddling Stellar S18S surf skis.  A short run off the beach to the transition area and then it was ready for the 20 kilometer bike leg.  The bike leg starts with a short hill out of the beach area and then most of the course is pretty flat as it loops around Fairport Harbor providing scenic views of Lake Erie.  My bike leg was going fairly well.   Light drizzle was falling from the sky but wasn’t much of an issue.   I was passed by a few extremely fast participants in the swim triathlon which didn’t bother me in the least.  The final miles heading back towards the transition area the winds really picked up forcing us all to work much harder.  Mile 10 I was passed by one of the top kayak triathlon competitors.  I expected this to happen.  Traditionally he is slower in the kayak but puts up the fastest bike split in the field.  He wasn’t that far ahead of me finishing the bike leg so I thought I might have a chance to catch him in the run.  Another stop in transition and it was of to finish the race on the run course.  I was 4th overall heading out of transition.  The run course starts with the same nasty short hill out of the beach area.  In the past I have pushed hard up the hill only to spend the next half mile trying to recover from the effort.  This year I took a slower more conservative approach going slow and steady.  This helped me recover much faster and get into my pace much easier.  I was off to a good start on the run.  I moved into 3rd place passing a competitor in the first mile.  I could see the 2nd place competitor ahead of me so kept pushing hard to see if I could catch him.  Unfortunately he had too much of a lead on me and I wasn’t able to catch him.  I ended up finishing 3rd overall with a time of 1:20:35.  I was pleased with the outcome as I improved on last year’s time by 2:20. My bike and run times were both better than last year.   Overall awards were only given to the 1st place winner in the kayak triathlon.  The 2nd place overall winner was in my age division so he was awarded 1st place in the division and I was awarded 2nd place in the division.

The race is always well organized by Lake Metro Parks.  Results were made immediately available online and on a kiosk. Participants received well designed pirate themed tech shirts and finisher medals.  The back of the shirts featured the words “Oh… You Ran A Marathon?  That’s Cute!”  along with icons for a swimmer, biker, and runner.  I think they forgot about us kayak triathletes when designing the shirts because they left the kayak icon off of the back.  I am sure I will have some fun conversations with my marathon running friends when I wear the shirt around them.  You would think the distance runners and triathletes travel in the same circles and some do but most seem to be very segregated from each other with a bit of a fun rivalry.

My only bit of constructive criticism about this race is I think the awards need to be rethought.  I would prefer to see them award the top 3 overall winners of the kayak triathlon plus the top 3 in each age division which are every 10 years.  Typically the overall winners are not included in age group awards but in this case the overall winners also received an additional trophy for winning their age group.  All awards were old school trophies.  For a while the awards presented at the race were logoed pint glasses.  I see the need to mix it up but maybe go with something different than traditional trophies.

If you are looking for a great triathlon to swim or kayak with a fast bike and run course than this race is for you!