Tower Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Got stuck against the wall. Went out hard, but felt sluggish pretty quickly. Just tried to hold on and put in a decent overall time.

Check in early enough to get a good lane (i.e., not against the wall).

Felt *really* cold outside coming out of the pool and probably overcompensated with an extra layer. Could have saved some time here. Didn't realize how much space there was from the mat to my rack, so I probably had a false sense of speediness on my transition. Went with the shoes clipped in ahead of time, and it worked out fine, so that was good.

Next time: shirt, glasses, helmet go. No messing around.

This was the first time that I biked after swimming, and I found myself able to hit a good speed much faster than I thought. Swimming must have been good to get the blood flowing. I thought the many turns would throw off maintaining a consistent speed, but they really didn't. Raced at a much faster pace than training, where I haven't been able to hit 20 mph for any long distance, but I think the course was a little shorter than the officially listed length. Managed my gears well to keep a good cadence around 90+. Glad that I "went for it" in gears that were thougher then I usually ride in when I found my cadence creeping up, which let me squeeze a little extra speed here and there.

Not much. Was happy with the ride.

Comedy of errors coming into T2. I started to get out of my shoes and ride in with feet on the top, but the dismount area came of *real* fast, and I had only gotten one foot out. Slammed on the breaks, unclipped my remaining shoe and ran in with one shoe on a one shoe off. I heard my friend coming in behind me saying something about losing a shoe, and I thought he was joking about my one bare foot. Turns out my shoe that I thought was clipped in had actually popped out. He was good enough to grab it for me. The turf was really bumpy and my bike was bouncing all over the place on the run back to the racks.

Start getting out of the shoes a lot further out from T2. Also try to rememebr to reset the watch right after I get out of the shoes and coasting in to avoid messing around with it in the transition area (stupid waste of time)

BRUTAL!! I had done 3-4 bricks in the few months leading up to the race, but my last one was about a month before the race. By the last one, I was starting to feel pretty good getting off the bike and was able to hold a 7:50 pace over 2-2.5 miles. I think a combination of this being the first time with a full routine (swim & bike) before the run as well as not keeping up with the bricks in the weeks before the race hurt me. First mile was about an 8:05 and then the elephant jumped on my back at the turn-around. Side cramp, fatigue, etc. and pace dropped by a minute almost instantly. I fought the urge to walk and kept my legs going and by the last half-mile was able to start running OK again and finished strong. Good experience to grit it out and also to realize that what felt like a total physical collapse only resulted in an extra 2-3 minutes on the run (no small amount of time for a 5K, but not as catastrophic a slow down as it felt during the run).

Keep up the training with bricks leading up to the race.

Hug and pick up the kids and my wife.


I think mostly the transition to the run. Keep up with the bricks. Also going to try and incorporate some more running mileage into the routine.


Great first experience. Well-run. Feels good to get the first one udner my belt.