The swim took me by surprise. I wasn't thinking about strategy when the gun went off, so I swam like mad for the first 200M. I tried to get into a grove, but I couldn't do it. Once I knew I was off my normal pace, I decided to easy up and try to regroup. In doing so, I cheated myself a little bit, but since it was my first tri, I thought it was the right thing to do.

Pace myself better and push myself a little more. In hindsight, much of the swim was mental and I wasn't prepared for that.

I had never practiced a transition and was a little unsure of myself. Given my lack of experience, it was a decent transition.

I would have trained without socks and done the whole tri with no socks. I also would have run and jumped on the bike.

The bike was a blast. I was only passed by 2 people (one who is an olympic triathlete) and passed many. I had a lot of ground to make up after a poor swim, but I was careful not to push too hard.

I would have pushed a little harder on the last lap and worked on mounting/dismounting the bike in training sessions.

My transition off the bike was very poor. I got stuck in one pedal at the end and really slowed my time.

I would have run and jumped on the bike and worked at getting my feet out prior to coming into the transition area.

I took it easy on the run. I could have pushed harder at the end and significantly boosted my overall ranking.

I would do more brick routines in practice. I only did one real brick prior to this race and it was weeks ago.

Lack of training - started late and got sick in the final two weeks.


Overall I had a blast in this race. It was my first tri, so I am very pleased with my results. I started training for a tri about 8 weeks ago. Before that, I couldn't swim 100M without stopping and had a average run pace of 8min/mile. I did not train as much as I wanted to and paid for it during the swim and run. That said, I really enjoyed the whole experience and am excited to try again after a couple more months of solid training.