Honolulu Tinman Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

The race director may want to rethink the swim course for next year. The out and back apparently resulted in some head on collisions. Either put out more bouys or make it a triangle swim. Not a lot I can say about my swim performance. Everything just kinda went so so. I wasn't able to find any feet to draft off of for very long, the waves weren't too much of a problem and I was sighting ok. I just haven't been swimming enough.

Swim more.

The run from beach to transition wasn't too bad. I've done longer. But the least they could have done was to sweep the area of the street we had to cross in bare feet. Other than that, all was good. Plenty of volunteers directing everybody. I was slightly disoriented when I got in the corral, caused me to delay for a couple of seconds trying to locate my bike. But I spotted it soon enough. Dropped goggles, wiped face on towel, race belt on, sunglasses on, helmet on, gel flask in pocket, grabbed bike and go. Once I got to the mount line I put my feet on top of my shoes and I was off. After I got going I managed to get my feet in the shoes fairly quickly and got to work.

Nothing really. Maybe get a better line on where I parked. I'm pretty happy with 14th overall and 2nd in my age group for T1.

As I got up to speed I started to pick off people that were out of the water before me. The climb right from the start seemed to be taking it's toll on some. But luckily I was used to climbing right off the bat from my commute to work up Pineapple rd. There was a pretty steady headwind outbound that gusted up once in awhile. Since I didn't scout the course, I didn't know what to expect from "Heartbreak" so I didn't push as hard as I could in an attempt to keep something in the tank for the hill. The headwind was quite annoying too, made me work harder than I wanted. Two guys from my age group blew by me as we headed out towards the turnaround, the headwind didn't seem to affect them. Once I got to the hill, I realized that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I dropped it into the 36 chainring and started climbing. I was steadily passing people. The hill didn't deserve its name in my opinion. KoleKole is way worse. Anyways, once I turned around I was able to hammer all the way back averaging around 25 with no headwind to slow me.

Scout the course.

As I neared T2 I took my feet out of the shoes and put them on top like I practice every ride now. Swung my leg over as I neared the dismount line and hopped off. Ran to my gear, racked the bike, took off helmet, put on visor, got into my shoes (love the Zoots) and was gone. As I crossed over the timing mat I realized that I forgot to drop my gel flask. Considered trashing it since it was bouncing a little, but decide to keep it.

Nothing, pretty decent T2, 34th overall and 7th in my age group.

For some strange reason I had stuck in my head that the run was flat. I'm not sure why, but I thought it was. There were no elevation maps on the website though. So imagine my surprise when I turned left to cross the street and looked up. It must have been 3 miles straight up! well maybe only 1/2 a mile or so. Anyways, at that point I decided I better buckle down and not go too hard since I obviously had no idea what was coming. I steadily passed people going up the hill but I wasn't pushing as hard as I could. The water station at the top was very well placed and the volunteers were awesome as usual. Started downhill from there, had to back off that because of no socks. The Zoots do well flat and uphill, but downhill I have to be carefull. I could feel the hot spots starting to form so I didn't charge the downhills as hard as I could. As I made a right turn I realized that the last part of the run was also the last part of the bike course. This was a mixed blessing to me. The good news, I knew that rest of the route. The bad news, I knew the rest of the route. It meant we had to climb Diamondhead again. Worse yet, had to go down it as well. The downhill was really starting to take a toll on my feet. But I managed to get to the finish without any blisters. I passed some young guy right before the chute, he wasn't having any of it though. He started speeding up to get ahead of me but couldn't quite manage it. It looked like he really wanted it though, so I backed off and let him pass me going into the finish.

Scout the dang course.

Not much, walked around drinking water and eating a bagel.


Lack of swimming, not scouting the course and no taper what so ever.


Other than the swim fiasco, every other part of the race was great. The volunteers were awesome. The waves were kind of illogical to me, not sure what they were thinking there. My watch time is a minute faster than the official time too. Probably due to the screw up with the swim starts.