Tri the Parks-John Tanner Sprint Triathlon I - TriathlonSprint

I went down to the water to put my foot in before the race to get a feel for the temperature. It felt every bit of 72 degrees. I felt good about the decision to not wear the wetsuit during the race after feeling the temperature. About 10 minutes before the gun, I got waist deep in the water and worked my way to about mid pack of the group. I looked around me and saw that most of the swimmers had wetsuits and counted about five of us that were not wearing. I knew I was giving up some speed so my strategy changed to just swim my own pace and let them pass. Gun goes off and I immediately feeling feet in my face and I'm struggling to get air. My head comes completely out of the water and I try to get settled in. About 100 meters into the swim, I get another foot in the face and I back off a little bit. When I backed off, I got three or four swimmers that swim on top of me. During this melee, I get a lung full of water and start coughing. I stop for a minute to catch my breath and then start back. When I start, I have four swimmers in front of me side by side that I cannot pass and I keep hitting their feet. Not wanting to swim on top of them, I slow down and get out of my rhythm.


Looking back and reflecting, I never got into a rhythm with this swim. I let the other swimmers dictate my swim and I should not do that. I always think it sounds crazy when somebody asks what you would do different and their answer is "everything". You can't really improve "everything" you need to start with the most glaring problems and work on those. However, if you asked me what went wrong during this swim, I would say "everything". Seriously, I need to get used to swimming with other people around me. I'm not sure how you train for the kicks to the face, people swimming to the front, sides and back of me and the physical contact. And quite simply, I need to be more aggressive with the swim . The next race, I will brace myself for the contact with the other swimmers and be better at holding my line. I've come to the conclusion that this is a contact sport portion of triathlon and I won't get better until I accept that fact. As you can tell, I was pretty disappointed with my performance here.

Coming out of the water, I was pretty disgusted but I wanted to make it up in transition. Plus, I was ready to make some time back up on the bike.

Transition was good but perhaps could have been a bit faster. Notes for next time, put the bike in an easy gear rather than the big chain and 13. I messed up on that one.

Bike started off great and quickly got into my cadence. Adrenalin was rushing so I couldn't really tell where my heart rate was. Overall, the course was not very challenging. A few rolling hills were thrown in there but nothing I was not prepared for. A few times in the first 5 miles, there was a guy that I passed about six times. We kept going back and forth on each other. For the last five miles, I noticed that he was drafting me a few times for over a minute at a time. He finally passed me and he slowed down again. This time, I decided enough was enough and I passed him with some speed. As my front tire was even with his, he decided to speed up and stayed beside me matching my speed. As that happened, I noticed an official was coming up behind us on a motorcycle and just knew that this yahoo was going to cause us to get a penalty. Although that apparently did not happen based on the official results, I think a more strict official would have given us a penalty.

I do have a confession to make though. I committed the cardinal sin of triathlon for this race. I changed my nutrition to something I did not train with. That's right, I did it. I ran out of infinit and my new formula did not come in yet. I switched to Gatorade for the race. Oh man, it was way too sweet and a lot stronger than infinit I was used to. Consequently, I did not want to drink any of it and only took in a few sips.


Make sure nutrition planned well in advance. Dismount bike before the line and not on it. I might have been penalized for that one in another race.

I decided to wear socks with my shoes so it cost me a little time there. I'm not so sure I would wear socks again in a sprint race but since this was really a training race for me, I wanted to be sure that I didn't get a blister that would prevent me from running the next day.

Nothing

When I came out of transition, the one thing that was on my mind was, “if Ironman is going to feel 10 times worse than this when I start running, I'm in for a world of pain”. My legs were very tight at the beginning. I could feel my lack of stretching in my hamstrings and my calves were a little tight. About 1.5 miles in, I started to feel a little cramp in my calf but I pushed through it and luckily it went away. I probably would have worn trail running shoes for this race as most of it was on gravel or had a slight off road, trail running vibe. I honestly don't know if the course was truly hilly or it was imagination playing tricks on me. I looked at my Garmin after the race and the elevation was not that bad. However, when I was running, there were a few big hills that got me good. For one hill, I walked up the last quarter of it to get my heart rate down a little. All in all, I feel OK with my run other than me taking that walking break up the hill. In retrospect, I probably should have pushed a little harder.

Lay it out there on the sprint runs. I know that I can take the pain of a 5K and I should push a little harder. I would like to add some hills to my training before Chattanooga. I need to practice running on those a little more.

Although I was disappointed with this race, I will not let that hinder my goals and where I want to go. I know there are several areas that I need to improve on and this was an eye opener for me. I know I said earlier that this was the beginning of my triathlon journey but my mentality has started to shift into my Ironman journey. This race reminds me of how important my goal of finishing Florida is to me. I am ready to get better and keep fighting to get to my goal.