UCLA IronBruin Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Outstanding, and about what I'd expect for the distance and type of course. Came 3rd out of water in wave (first 2 were relay).

Be more aggressive in speed in rounding the buoys (treat them like walls--accelerate in and out). Push a little harder (stayed on the feet of the leaders/drafted); it's a sprint and it's okay to puke in T1. Oh, and hit my watch for a split.

Remember to rack my bike in the direction I need to leave so that I don't have to walk around the whole rack (wasn't possible to duck under it). Time to move on to shoes clipped to bike already, too. I rolled my socks, but maybe need even looser ones--hard to pull on esp. w/nothing to hold on to for balance.

There was a lot of scary hype about the hills, and though I took them slower than I'd have liked, I felt very strong. I really loved the nature of the bike course--even hillier and steeper would have been great.

There was a 10-year-old doing his first triathlon, but he needed to know what ON YOUR LEFT means--when I said it to pass, he looked left, crossed right in front of me, and crashed into the bushes. I slowed down considerably, watched him crash, and though I felt bad about not stopping--you've got to know what ON YOUR LEFT means! (Also, some volunteers saw and were coming over).

Put a different cassette on so that I have one more gear to spin up in. Train on hills more (not just in Spinning(R) class, although that did me very well). Be more aggressive in passing people on downhills before the braking bottlenecks at the turns. Blow my legs up a lot more--it's a sprint. Move quickly past an accident, even if it's one I caused (by following the rules!)

There was nowhere to rack my bike when I got there--I had to put my bike on the end of the rack, and then retrieve my running shoes out from under the bikes to put them on, no way to just slide my feet in. Transition hogs!!!

Yankz/bungees on shoes--doesn't really matter how they're laced for a sprint (I usually use butterfly lacing, which lends itself poorly to Yankz).

A wonderful achievement--ran the entire run, no walking. May have been faster with walk breaks, but I doubt it. This is by far the fastest run pace I've hit for a race.

Run the course beforehand. I would have pushed harder on the uphill if I knew the rest was downhill, and zoomed the downhill more.

Walked around. Tried not to yak. Ate a bit of bagel and coffee with lots of cream and sugar, then drank some free energy drink. Ran in with Jocelyn, then Dolores. It was a pleasure to meet Cash Mason and chat with him for a bit as we waited for runners coming in near the finish line.


Weight, no recent familiarity with course, better bike handling skills to not get caught behind slower riders on turns, better T1 planning, T2 rack hogs. Slept wrong on left knee and woke up with it tweaked. Stayed up way too late carousing and was a bit sore from Friday evening. Too much bike volume this week.

I'm not going to whine about how I was negligent, and the transitions and bike course turns sucked, and how if I were less of an idiot and the course were better planned, I'd at least have the 16s to break 1:30, if not 2min to have hardwared in the 31-50 age group. (Ha, there, I just did). As it is, I placed 3rd in 30-39 (in case you missed that in the numbers up top :)), and I hauled azz.

Bottom line: the race was fantastic, and so was I. I am much more confident about being prepared for and able to finish CA 70.3 now.

I've come a long way from when I did this, my first tri, in 2005. (Different course but it seems the overall/winning division times were roughly comparable). I went from 2:12 to 1:30. Back then, I finished 7th to LAST (2nd last in my division).


Packet pickup was very smooth and the goody bag/contents was the best ever.

The swim was a no-worse cluster fcuk than most open-waters, though slower swimmers (like slower bikers) should have been advised to stay to the outside. It is a bit bizarre in a sprint to have first/last waves 2 hrs apart. It means the slower runners in the latter waves will have to run in traffic.

Bike course was hilly and technical; even a few inches or a foot wider on the 90-degree turn lanes at the bottom of downhills would have been very helpful. For safety, no passing on turns is important, but it was very frustrating, not to mention dangerous, to get stuck behind a bunch of bikers riding their brakes and weaving on those end turns.

No mile markers and no water on the run.

Volunteers were very plentiful, very helpful, and just rocked.

End-of-race expo was small but wonderful. Food was good and plentiful. Raffle was neat and more giveaways for all at the end.

Overall, a very well-planned and executed race (especially for what was essentially now an inaugural race).