Take Flight Triathlon 2008 - TriathlonSprint

This swim was one of my better ones for the year I thought. I had hoped to pass at least one person, and passed two. I came out of the water almost at the same time as the next person, so that was nice too. My time was a little faster, as there was a short run to the transition area.

Train my body hairs to work like cillia and help me swim faster.

My transitions suck. I almost fell down twice putting my shoes on. The only consolation to that is that if I tried a running mount, I would totally fall down. Likely more than twice. I did save a little time cutting through a grassy area to the bike start, and not following the pavement like most of the people did.

Practicing a transition could help, but I think that until I can run faster, I'll always be slow in transitions.

This was a nice bike course. One section of the road was a bit rough, but not terrible. I would say the highlight for me was during a long (for the course) but not steep downhill section. There was a person 50 yards or so ahead of me, that started posing for the photographer, waving, thumbs up, and other silly gestures while not pedaling at all. Now I might not be a great cyclist (frankly I'm barely good enough to be a below average one) but I don't sit up and mug for a photographer. So as I passed this guy doing about 30mph, and gave a slightly late "on your left", he looked over and made a great "wtf" face. I hope the photographer got it, that would be great.

Ride more, suck less.

Slow here, mostly because I took the time to have another Hammer Gel, and wash it down with more water. The apple-cin flavour doesn't sit well with me if I don't drink a lot of water, but having only a few of these for "breakfast" I was feeling pretty hungry. And let's face it, I have sucky transitions anyhow, a couple dozen seconds more wasn't going to win me anything.

Two words, Rascal Scooter.

My two hopes for this run were to actually run the whole time, and to finish in under 30 minutes. I knew I would have to have a screaming pace for me to be under 30, and shortly into the run I knew it just wasn't in the cards. That being said, this is a 5K PR for me. 4 seconds faster than my best stand alone 5K time. I'm quite happy with that, especially as I'd sprained my ankle a few weeks prior and had totally shut down all of my workouts for ~3 weeks just hoping to rest it enough to race well. I passed a good number of people, and got passed by a handful as well. Nobody that I passed ever passed me back though.

As an aside, I managed to not walk at all, not even the water stations. If I had managed to only walk those, I would have still been happy. I managed to drink while running pretty well, and that was my biggest concern. I just didn't want to be the first person to drown during the run in a tri.

Run like the wind, as opposed to running like the ground is covered in jam.

Grabbed a bottle of water, and a banana half and packed up my crap.


Poor training and being fat.


The race itself was great. But I doubt I'd do this again. There are just too many people for a pool swim. The first person started at 0730, and some people had start times that weren't until within 5 minutes of 10am. That and if I'm going to pay to stay in a hotel, or drive 90+ minutes, I'll want a longer race.