Montclair Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

The beginning of my wave (wave 3) was a washing machine. It was pretty bad for the first couple hundred yards. I found me some feet to draft off of and stayed with them for the whole swim. I do believe I'm a shade faster a swimmer than the feet I was on and I realized I probably wanted to either go on my own or find someone a bit faster to draft off of.

Great swim. Stayed within the group this time until I passed the feet I was drafting off. I went on my own with about 300-400 yds left to swim and I ended up inbetween groups. Wow did it get empty fast. Lots of people in front of me by 10-20 yards, lots of people behind me by 10-20 yards but all by myself where I was.

There was no current, there were no waves, there was precious little wind and the sun stayed behind light clouds until just before the end of my swim. If there are better conditions available I've not seen them.



Find faster feet to draft off of or go on my own and see if I could get a couple, literally, minutes cut off that time.

T-1 was interesting. It was grass and on a mild hill. Wet feet, grass, hill... I'm guessing there was more than one person that kathumped on their butts this day.

Threw on a Halo sweat band, helmet and took my bike to the mount point.

Not much.

Holy COW that uphill to get out of the transition area was a bear. Then you had about 9% hill for the first 1/2 mile to get up to the road we were to ride on.

I had an aero bottle filled with 2 scoops of HEED and water. It started getting warm (75-80) towards the end so I went ahead and took a couple endurolytes and was pleased at the lack of cramping the whole race.

Three loops on the Waterway road. About half of it or close to that was newly paved and the other half was not.

There were only a couple spots during loop three that there was much of any congestion for me. I didn't get caught behind anyone that didn't move almost immediately and everyone was staying somewhat right. The pavement that was weathered had spiderweb cracks all over the tire indentations and people were staying more towards the center during that part but even then there was enough road to pass.

Once again I was getting passed by 404s, 808s and death star sounding wheels almost exclusively. I'm happy about that, not many standard road or tri bikes pass me any more.

Not a lot. I liked that ride.

Good transition. Had to put socks on for this one as I'm still working on the HIM schedule and am doing all my running with socks this year. That slowed me down some but I'm not going to podium anyway so what the heck.

Not much.

Two loops. Same billy goat climb to get out of transition as you had for the bike. What sadist thought that up? Then to come back around, see the finish line and make you do a trail run only to go back to the billy goat climb for the second loop!

The trail part of this run was amusing. If you've ever seen run away truck ramps on the interstate, that's what kind of hills there were in the 200-300 yards of trail. I warned the girl in front of me that if my brakes failed I was gonna take her with me because I would have no choice. She wisely slid to the uphill side of the path. Then you break out to daylight only to find the hill out of transition and you know what's in store for you for the next 1/2 mile.

I took the water offered. There was one of the places that actually had ice water and that was wonderful.

I actually picked up the pace in the last mile and was surprised to find I still had some left in the tank at the finish line. Wow, that's a shock. I know I went out as hard or harder than I have on other sprints where I couldn't think at the end and wouldn't bend over to take my chip off. This was nothing like that. Nothing was sore, nothing hurt, no dizziness. I might have to reevaluate what I've got left on other short course tris and push a lot harder.

ummm run faster? Not whimper when trying to go up that bloody slope from transition?

Walked around. Got a couple pieces of pizza. Waited around for the "Slower than arthritic water buffalo" results as that was the first one I was on.


I'm not a runner. Never have been and probably never will be. I'm shooting for about 9 minute miles by sometime next year but this year I'm happy where I am.


Good race! I need to push myself more and harder on these and see what I can actually do.