Lion Man Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

The rope that was supposed to mark the course was broken before the race started, suposedly by a boat so that made navigation a bit hard after passing the first buoy. Looking at a video that my brother captured of me swimming the last 200 meters, you could clearly see that I was lifting my head way out of the water to check which direction I was heading. Several times I would end up heading off course and had to correct my direction. It was my first time swimming the course and that particular distance in open water so I kinda tried my best to swim at a pace I knew I could maitain for a long time. I didn't increase my pace until about the last 200 meters.

Not lift my head as high when sighting, swim the course at least 1 time prior to race day, try to get up front with the faster guys earlier in the swim, swim faster

Transition was ok; took less than a minute to put on riding shirt, helmet, shoes, grab power gel packet; jumped on bike before completed strapping on shoes.

next time I will use a triathlon shirt or suit that has pockets so I wouldn't have to haul on a shirt before the bike.

Started out slow on the bike for about first half mile or so until I was joined by 4 guys who came out the water behind me and we rode the entire course together catching one other guy along the way so there were 6 of us rolling in to the transition area together. We had a headwind going and a tail wind on the way back. We took turns pacing. On the way back with the tail wind pushing us a little we were able to jump to speeds of as fast as 28 mph but not for long because some guys were not willing to work as hard. I think I did a little too much of the pacing and felt a slight cramping of my hamstring muscles, something I never got in training.

I'm not sure. I'd like to say "wait for no one" but it does help when riding as a group (drafting is allowed) unless the guys you are riding with are much faster than you on the run. In my case they were all faster on the run except for one.

I took too long to get helmet and riding shirt off and too long to get socks and running shoes on. Took about a minute.

Practice this transition and again use one shirt through out so I woulldn't have to be putting on shirt in T1 and taking off in T2

Though the day had started off with overcast sky it became very hot by the time we started the run. The extreme heat forced me to run at a much slower pace than I wanted to. If the organizers' measurement of the course distance is correct then I actually ran faster than I thought I did. I very much doubt it but if so then I was actually flying at about 8.2 min/mile. I can barely do that on a cool morning much less on a hot day after swimming 1500 meters and riding 25 miles.

Maybe a power gel half way through the run might have helped but definitely I need to train more in the sun.

Not having done the course before I was not sure how hard to push and so I did everything at a pace I knew I could easilly maintain throughout.


The first drink station I passed had ran out of water; that was really disapointing because It was HOT and I really needed to coool off. I had to run almost another mile before reaching the next drink station.