Hy-Vee Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

in the first 100 meters, I don't know what happened, but I lost it mentally and kind of freaked out. Had to resort to breast stroke for a minute to settle myself down. Once I got going again I was behind my whole wave. So I spent the rest of the swim passing people like crazy, after that little incident I actually swam about average for myself, but getting behind at the start was a bad deal. I ended up about 2 to 3 minutes slow on my time from where I wanted to be.

I need to get some more open water swim experience. I swim in the pool all the time, and this only being my 3rd open water swim, my lack of experienced showed.

HUGE transition area, I ran from entrance to exit of T1 before the race and it was a solid 65 to 70 seconds of running. Plus becuase of the double transition areas, we were not allowed back into T1 to get our items, we had plastic trash sacks to put everything into. If you wanted to keep it, it had to be in that sack. so after getting to your station, you had to stuff your wetsuit and such into this plastic sack. took extra time.

nothing transition was pretty smooth considering changes.

Road hard on the flats and through the corners and on the smaller hills. Backed it down on notch on the two big hills to save a little bit of energy for the run. with this being my first olympic distance race, I didn't was to blow up on the run. I rode good, average ride for me.

Looking back now, I could have hammered a lot more on the bike and still had enough to complete the run.

due to the different venues, we had to place all our run items into a blue sack and open it upon arrival at T2, because we didn't get to visit T2 before the race started. This made for a slightly longer transition, plus just running from entrance to exit of T2 was a solid 60 seconds.

not tied my back to the rack pole, I would have just laid it on the ground, easier to open, and wouldn't have had to fight the knot in the string.

I started off feeling pretty comfortable and confident on the run, I knew I wasn't going to set any records, but knew I had enough to finish. I ran within my ability and felt ok most of the course. Felt good considering this is the first time I have raced this far.

I would have started out harder on the run, I don't do well starting easy and trying to pick it up coming to the finish, I had enough fuel in the tank, I could have gone out a little harder and still finished good.

sat in a pool of ice to cool down, and drank gatorade and watched people come across the line on the big screen.


Experience was probably my most limiting factor, not knowing how my body would perform at this distance. My swim was definitely a disappointment, becuase I have put a lot of time into my swim, and it didn't correlate into a solid race swim. Otherwise I raced within my ability, which was one of my goals,(don't blow up!) My other goal was 2:45, which I missed by 1 minute. Overall I am happy.


Considering this race was scheduled to be a duathlon on Wednesday, and we raced a full olympic triathlon on Sunday was an incredible feat. Great race all around, best I have ever attended. Top Notch!