New To Triathlon -- Looking for TIps and Advice

Happy Saturday Everyone--

After last Saturday, my first triathlon is in the books.  It was a 5K run, 10K, Bike, and 900 yd pool swim in Seward, Alaska.  For the most part, in that order, although if you could do a 20 minute swim(which I couldn't) you had the option to do you swim the night before the race, or the morning of, before the run and bike portions.

I participated as the biker in a relay team last fall, and had initially planned to do the same last week.  But a couple months ago, when I was talking to my brother in law who had told me about this particular race, he encouraged me to do the whole thing alone.  I told him the swim was going to kill me.  But he persisted, and so I started swimming 2-3 times a week for the 5 weeks leading up to the race, and I survived.

Run -- 30:50; Bike -- 30:56, which includes 40 seconds of transition time; and Swim -- 22:23.  Total TIme 1:24:09.  I was dead last in my division, but not the last man overall.  And I wasn't the slowest in the pool as I thought I would likely be.

I started running a few years ago because I needed to lose some serious weight.  Once I started, I Set a goal to run a marathon 13 months later.  I did it.  I ran another one 5 months later at the end of a business trip.  I didn't get any marathons in last year due to the fact that I tore a calf muscle about 9 weeks prior to the one I Was going to do last summer.  I did still manage a few 10 milers and 5Ks last year, in addition to being part of that triathlon team with my kids (in which we placed 4th of 9 teams.)  I generally run about 10-11 minute miles for shorter distances, and get up into the 12 minute range for longer races.

I've also done a fair amount of biking.  Never anything for racing or anything like that.  But I have commuted to work regularly before, and will be starting to do that again here in another week.  4.5 miles each way.

Swimming is my weakness.  When I got in the pool for the first in MANY MANY years about 6 weeks ago, it took me almost 45 minutes to complete 900 yards.  Several stops to catch my breath.  Several laps on my back to catch a little break.  FOr the last 2 weeks before my actual triathlon, I was swimming 2 laps freestyle, and 1 lap backstroke.  My best time was about 26.5 minutes.  That was the swimming methodology I had planned to use on race day.  But as I sat on a bench on the deck of the pool watching others swim on race day, I got to thinking.  It was RACE DAY.  I had to GIVE MY ALL.  I decided that I would swim freestyle as long as I could, and only flip to my back when I Just couldn't go front anymore.  I told myself that even my slowest freestyle laps would still be faster than my fastest backstroke laps.  Despite making this decision before getting into the water, I still wasn't totally convinced of it myself, and I found my self near the end of lap 2 debating whether to go ahead and flip to my back for lap 3 just as I had been practicing.  IT was mind over matter, and I managed to get to the wall, and keep going in my front.  I managed to do the whole thing on my front.  Not knowing where I was time wise, I spent the entire final lap telling myself, "25, 25, 25, 25,...." thinking that I probably had a shot of making 25 minutes.  When I got to the wall for the final time and asked the timer/counter what my time was, I was shocked.  I had to have her repeat it just to make sure I had heard her correctly.

So now, I'm looking forward to my next Triathlon.  I do already have some running races on the calendar for summer, including a marathon on June 23.

I have a trip to Las Vegas for a work meeting the week of October 22.  I found a triathlon in Lake Mead/Boulder City on October 20th, the Pumpkinman that I think I may try to work in as a part of this trip.  So my questions are as follows:

1.  Living in Alaska, there aren't many places to do open water swimming.  I know that lake swimming vs pool swimming are 2 different ball games, especially with a mass start like that race will be.  Any pointers as to how to handle this?  Is going once or twice in the 2 days before the race enough?  I would likely land in Las Vegas the morning of Thursday, October 18th.  The swim portion of this race will be 750 yards(just under half a mile).

2.  I don't own a wetsuit, and don't have a desire to at this point.  Will there be places there that I can rent one from?  And would that be necessary/recommended for the sprint length race?

3.  I don't even own a road bike -- only a mountain bike.  I Really don't want to ship it down and back.  Are there places that I could rent a bike to use for the race?

4. I've looked at the bicycle course, and the elevation for the last 5 miles is an incline of about 1,000 to 1,200 feet.  Is there a way to get a better idea of what the grade of the incline is?

5.  What kind of training plan would you recommend??  In addition to the marathon in June that I'm currently training for, I am going to run a half marathon at Disney World with a friend of mine on November 10th, and I have a good running training plan mapped out for this one.

Thanks in advance for any tips and answers to the questions presented.

Rob