Fleet Feet Aquathon #1 - Aquathlon

Not sure what to think about this one. My goal was 15:00, so I certainly went fast enough. But I didn't feel very comfortable in the water. People were pushing me around a bit at the start, so I didn't do much drafting. I could go faster swimming in clear water, and there were some sharp elbows out there (and some sharp fingernails that were shredding up my feet!). My navigation during the first 2/3 of the race was good, because the buoys were easy to see. When heading toward the shore, I'm not sure whether I was swimming straight or zigzagging. I decided for this part to draft someone just so that I could make sure I was sort of on course. I beat the people around me out of the water with some well-timed dolphin dives.

Overall I didn't push to my limit in this swim, so I could have gone a bit faster.

Next time I'm going to start on the edge of the pack and head straight for the first buoy. I won't bother trying to be part of the pack for that part, and if I swim hard I can join up with the fast people after that first turn. I'm sick of the game of elbow chicken with every swim start.

I had a good transition spot, and since I dolphin dived right up to the edge of the water I had about 20 yards to get my suit off. I didn't make it in time. Then I fumbled with my shoes a lot.

Surprisingly I had the 14th fastest transition. It should have been about 30 seconds though.

Next time I'm going to get a crappier transition spot, so that I have to run a little more to get to it. That way I can get my suit off while running instead of while standing still.

This run was just terrible. I think it is my slowest 5k in 10 years. No exaggeration. The last time I ran this slowly was my very first cross country season in high school. I usually make accurate predictions of my races, and I was conservatively thinking I should do this in about 19 minutes. Man was I wrong.

Everything about the run gave me problems. Wearing a soaking wet tri suit was really stifling. I wanted to rip my shirt off, but I decided I'm too fat to go shirtless. My feet felt weird in my shoes, again because they were wet. They were moving around and stuff in there. I had these sunglasses on and they were bugging my face. I just didn't feel comfortable. My stomach hurt, which I guess was typical after the swim. And after a mile my legs just started to suck. My shins hurt really bad and I didn't have any power coming out of my hamstrings. It was a survivathon from the start, so mentally I gave up after about a mile.

I guess mile 1 wasn't terrible. I did it in about 6:40, which is fine for the circumstances. And I was moving up in the field.

But mile 2 was the worst. I think it took me more than 7:30 to do. My lungs were all caught up at this point, but since my legs were so weak and painful I wasn't even breathing that hard. It was like a training run. People started cruising past me at this point.

Mile 3 was still bad. It also took me well over 7 minutes. I was cruising by myself for most of it, and then with about 400 to go a pack decided to pass me. After the first person passed me I must have gotten a surge of adrenaline because my legs suddenly felt good and I could actually run like it was a race. So, I took off. I outran that whole pack, by a good amount too. I was glad I could at least finish well.


I don't know. I have to mentally get into it, I guess. Whenever I get competitive, my legs don't hurt at all. My shins bothered me real bad last weekend during a warmup for a half marathon, but once the gun went off I felt no pain and ran 6:30/mile. Part of my suckiness today was my body's revenge for that half marathon. But yeah, maybe if I can trick myself into getting competitive I'll release painkillers or something long enough to run well.

I just walked back along the course to cheer on the finishers. I'm sure they were suffering too.

I grabbed a vitamin water and drank it, but then I found out it only had 10 Calories in it! That's not enough for me!

I should have stretched too, I think.

Later in the night I bought a 20-lb bag of ice and decided to get real aggressive about healing up my shins.


I was not recovered at all from my last running race.

Also, running after swimming is HARD! Much harder than running after biking.

I'm happy with my swim time, but if I had run even reasonably well, I would have been 10 places closer to the front. Big bummer there.


It's a no-frills relatively informal race, but the people doing the race are competent enough that nothing important is missing. The swim is really nice. Relatively easy for an open-water swim because the water is clear and it's easy to sight, but it's a long enough swim that you can't phone it in.