Lake Summerside Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

The time came for our race to begin. The horn sounded, and I slowly jogged into the water, letting most people go in front of me. There was some congestion initially, which is impossible to avoid with 91 people starting at once, but nothing too bad, just some bumping. Pretty quickly I found some space, and almost immediately flipped over onto my back. The cold combined with the wetsuit just made me feel too constricted, and I couldn't hold my breath long enough, so I didn't really try. I probably completed about three-quarters of the swim on my back, and a lot of it just chugging along with my legs. Whenever I did flip onto my front I could go a lot faster, but I just couldn't keep it up for long enough. But my emphasis was on finishing the swim, and that's what I did. In the final 250 metres, I picked one guy who I would try to beat, and I did, by about 20 metres.

Fit my wetsuit properly, relax.

My transition was horrible. Absolutely horrific. I knew going in that I would have troubles getting my wetsuit over my heels, but hadn't realized how tired my arms would be. It must have taken me 5 minutes to get it off. I'd estimate my transition time at around 7 minutes, which is unacceptable. There is a lot of room for improvement here. Unfortunately this race didn't do separate times for transitions, so I don't know how much of my bike time was taken up in this transition.

I felt really good on the bike. I kept up a good speed the whole time, and passed a lot of people. There were some very strong headwinds, which made the ride difficult, but I like to think that my leg strength is my strongest point, and I was able to push past quite a few people. The bike was pretty uneventful, even though it was the longest part of the race. I couldn't feel my feet the whole time, which was weird, as they were still numb from the swim. Leif passed me with about 7 km to go, and it was nice to see him and call out some encouragement.

My second transition (T2) was amazing. Because I don't have cycling shoes, all I had to do was rack my bike, pull off my helmet and start running. I think I was probably in and out of the whole transition zone in less than 30 seconds. The announcer called out my name as I started off on the run, which was a pretty cool feeling.

It was overall a very pleasant run, and there were lots of places to pass by runners going in the opposite direction so I could know exactly how my friends were doing. I had, as a bit of a joke, set a goal of finishing my Sprint distance race before Leif finished his Olympic distance race (all distances doubled). Leif had a 30 minute head start, and it turns out that this was actually not a guarantee, given his super-human speed. I passed him going in the other direction as I started out on my 2nd lap and he was finishing his 2nd, so I realized that I just needed to finish my lap before he could do two, which I did, finishing about 5 minutes before Leif did. The first lap of the run was tough, because my legs were very tired. The swimming on my back had been a lot harder on my legs than I had anticipated, so they were starting to cramp up. Also, running after a long bike is a major switch in muscles and doesn't feel very natural at all. I'm certain that my second loop was a lot faster than my first one. I turned on the speed in the final 300 metres, and passed 2 or 3 people so that I could have the finish line all to myself. I came around the corner, heard Jana and our other friends that had come out to watch cheering me on, and sprinted across the finish. I felt so great!!

Severe knee pain and calf cramping, so I got a massage. Great pasta lunch.


At various points in the buildup to this race, I had set different goals for myself. At one point, I wanted to finish in 1:30. However, I abandoned that goal early on, realizing that it was both way too fast for my abilities and also didn't factor in any flexibility for a longer bike (such as in this race) or race-specific factors (like the headwinds and road conditions on the bike). Later I set a goal of finishing without walking. I abandoned that goal after a heavy workout in the river valley in which I realized that some hills are just too large to run up. But after seeing the racecourse, I re-adopted that goal, and yesterday I achieved it. That is probably what I am the most proud of out of the whole day: I finished the whole triathlon without walking, and pushed as hard as I possibly could.