The Nation's Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

The start was somewhat disorganized. There were 32 swim waves, and there aren't 32 different cap colors, so colors were repeated. It was impossible to hear the swim start announcer over the music and the main announcer, so nobody knew where to congregate. TI downed a gel 15 minutes before my wave start, and got in the water with the other royal blue capped 35-39 year olds. There weren't enough buoys--I started off aiming at the wrong arch of the bridge and had to correct as I got closer and realized that everyone was off to my left. Coming back downstream, I couldn't see the yellow buoys because they were widely spaced and I was going into the sun. But I was swimming great. I didn't feel tired. I was hoping to get out of the water in 30 minutes. As I was approaching the exit, I heard the horn go off to start another wave. I assumed it was the wave 30 minutes after mine, but when I got out and looked at my watch, it was 27:20, so it was actually the wave 27 minutes after mine. (They were starting every 3 minutes.) The swim time included a minute jog to the entrance to transition, so the official swim time was a minute longer.

I need to work on my sighting a bit, but other than that, no complaints. I couldn't swim 50 meters without stopping as of April 1, and I finished in the top 16% of my age group on the swim five months later.

I don't know what people do in transition. I had to take off my wetsuit and put on my bike shoes. (My attempts at flying mounts have not been successful with wet feet.) I was 8th in my AG out of 462, and I assume that some of those who beat me weren't wearing wetsuits. I wasn't sprinting through. Are people drying off? Changing clothes? Sending texts?

Nothing

The bike is definitely my relative weakness. I held 20 mph over a 16 mile sprint course a month ago, and was hoping to average 20 for this race. On my Garmin 305, I averaged 21 over 25 miles. My official average was 20.7. THe bike went well. It wasn't nearly as crowded as I feared. On the way back, though, it looked a lot worse for the women and older men who started behind me. Most of the road was smooth, but there were some definite potholes and bad joints on the overpasses and the Whitehurst. I held my aero position the entire way. I'm not used to drinking from the aero position, and every time I grabbed my water bottle, my watch strap caught on the brake cable and slowed me down a bit. The turnaround was at the bottom of a long hill, so it was frustrating to have to brake at the bottom and lose momentum. I had gels about 20 minutes and 50 minutes into the ride.

Do more intervals. I need to get my speed up. I figure that swapping my road bike with standard wheels and clip ons for a tri bike with 808s could get me a minute or two, but the rest is up to me. I think I'll get a CompuTrainer and work on speed intervals over the winter.

Perfect T2. I was 7th out of 462 in my AG. I had considered putting on socks--I got blisters in a 5 mile run a couple months ago, but decided not to take the time.

Not a thing.

Wow. This was my best run ever. I didn't have any "bricky" feeling coming out of T2--it was like I just stepped out my front door fresh. The one problem was that I had to take a leak. I didn't want to stop in T2 because the porta-johns were way out of the way. I was hoping there were some on the course, but I didn't see any. By mile 3, I decided to find a spot in the bushes. That cost me 29 seconds. I was trying to hold out, but I had only had one bottle of water on the bike and didn't want to ruin everything by getting dehydrated. I felt like I was floating the entire run. The only time I felt bad was a little nausea during the last half mile. I ended up beating my stand-alone 10k best by 2 minutes that I set in mid-June (2:30 if I substract out my bathroom break).

Absolutely nothing, except not have to go to the bathroom.

I drank two bottles of PowerAde and waited 45 minutes for transition to open, then I biked 9 miles home.


Bike speed


I was terrified that this race was going to be an organizational disaster. I heard that the bike was crowded last year, and there were twice as many competitors this year. I think it must have been a lot worse for those who started behind me.

This is my first race longer than a sprint. I went into the race hoping to beat 2:40:00, and I cranked out a 2:26:07. I've never felt this good in a race before. I didn't feel like I was pushing hard at all, but I was flying. Of course that leads to the after-race second guessing that I should have pushed harder, but I'm sure I would have blown up if I had.