EX2 Off-Road Triathlon - TriathlonOther

The course map is kind of misleading, so I had a bit of a scare during the first lap. Map shows buoys equidistant apart, but when we kept swimming and swimming for the first one, I kept doubting myself and eventually had to do a few stop sights. After making the first turn, it's almost a straight line to shore, the second bouy is mostly a sighting one. So I come ashore, more tired than I thought I should be, and I even went slow.. ugh I was hoping that this wasn't going to be a repeat of my first experience. Luckily I cooled down, and the second lap went far smoother than the first, although I got kicked in teh face, knocking my goggles off my face, but thankfully the aquasphere goggles are easy to fix in a pinch.

I would make sure I know the course like I know the bike course. Navigation is hard as it is and I don't need to mess things up by trying to wing it when I'm not experienced.

I don't have my shoes connected to my bike, but I didn't totally fasten them down before running out of the transition area. Also don't know the transition times since they're included in the first bike lap and run split.

After this one, I think I'm going to keep my gloves on my handlebars and put them on after getting on the bike, putting full fingered gloves on wet hands can be a bit of a pain.

I may start to do the no sock thing, not really sure if it's worth a few seconds right now.

Lots of slower Duathlon people clogging up the single track on the first lap. They were difficult to get around, and were taking some not so hard sections really slow. Then people always seemed to hog up the good/smooth side when they were walking their bikes up the difficult sections, making it even harder to do the climbs since I had to pick a less appealing line. I kept meeting up with another duathlete and passing him during the climbing sections and he would pass me on the flats, I ended up seeing this guy a lot and will comment on him again during the run.

Not much, probably eat my first gel earlier in the bike. I ate one one a smooth section, but it's about 5 minutes before the killer climbs and I got some wicked stomach cramps from it.

I'm pretty decent at these, once again don't know the split but I did beat a duathlete through transition. I know this since he passed me on the lakeside single track before the end of the lap, but I would eventually win out that battle.

Nothing really different for me now.

Totally incredible run course. Sweet single track, but difficult to get a good footing. The duathlete who was keeping even with me eventually caught up to me at about mile 1 and almost as soon as he passed me he began shouting in pain. He got caught up with the dreaded hamstring cramp, I never saw him again during the race. I definitely fell once trying to be a nice guy and let someone pass so I moved over to the side. After that I just said, f-it I'm holding my line and they've got to pass me. I also had a close call for an ankle sprain coming down one of the rocky hills, but luck was on my side.

Remembering the advice I got from a co-worker who had done the race before I only tried to give it a good kick at the end if I saw someone in my age group nearby. Well someone in my age group came up on me with about 1/3 mile to go and I wasn't about to let him pass me. I put on the jets and we raced it out to the finish line, I think he didn't have the juice to finish and I passed him right at the end to get 12th in my age group.

BTW, that guy who came up next to me on the finish raced an almost identical race as me, just swapping bike/run splits. I was looking through the pictures and I noticed he was right in front of me there, and I think he might have been the person who had some nice words as we were running from the lake exit over to the start of the second lap.

Not much, maybe push harder on some sections of the really technical section, but I think I did it about as good as I could considering my current running abilities.

After finally getting out of the finish area, just walked around a bit and took a dip in the lake to cool down.


overall training volume. First year, so I'm not really complaining. I paced this race correctly and went from BOP a month ago in Richmond to MOP for this race. I dropped 30 minutes off my time, but this is a faster course.


Can't wait to do it again!