Downtown Columbia Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

This swim was awful. I was swimming semi-OK, not great, but my turns were atrocious. Yes, there was crowding at EVERY wall, but still, I managed to botch every single flip turn, each one in a new and interesting way. I'm surprised I don't have a bruise on my head from running in to lane lines.

A couple of times I thought I might benefit from getting into some clearer water so I mustered up the energy to pass a few people, but ended up right back in a pack of swimmers each time. Yuck. I am very glad that this is my only pool tri this year. I find it almost unbelievable that I was 4th in AG for the swim. That's crazy. Maybe everybody had just as terrible a swim as I did.

This was probably my worst T1 ever. I wanted to wear a cycling vest over my tri top because it was pretty chilly out. Well, I ended up putting it on inside out and then couldn't zip it up. My fingers were quickly becoming icicles, and after fumbling around with it for a while, I took it off and threw it down in disgust. I put my shoes on in T1 because of the climb right out of the gate, but by then my fingers were freezing up and it took two tries to get the straps on right. I probably lost 30 seconds in T1, possibly more.

Next time, I won't bother with the cycling vest. Yes, it was cold. I survived.

I nailed the bike. I feel really good about this ride. Nobody passed me, and I passed scads of people. Right at the end, I even caught up to someone (Randy) who last year was always faster than me on the bike. That's when I knew I was riding well. It got a bit crowded by the third loop but I was mostly able to maneuver around people and hold speed. I was absolutely freezing the whole time. My stomach and, uh, below, were numb.

That's more like it. This was a fast T2. I could do it a little faster, but not much. The guys who were faster than me were also closer to the entrance and exit.

Lie about my swim time to get a spot close to the entrance? Kidding...

I forgot to lap my watch before the run, and anyway I don't think the miles were marked. This was a good thing, probably. I just ran hard. Once or twice I caught myself easing up and had to refocus to push. I had passed Randy in T2 and was thinking the whole time that any second he would come past me and then I'd have someone to be my rabbit, but he never did come past. In fact, nobody passed me. Of course, what that really means is that I have to become a faster swimmer!

Somehow in T2 I ended up swapping race belts with #61. During the run I hear "Hey, you're not my boyfriend!", and I'm thinking "Well, that's true." My wife was standing there as well and probably had a similar thought... I had no idea until the end that I was running with the wrong race number. She came up to me at the end and explained and I found him later and swapped back.

I found Misty and the kids. It was nice that they were there. The post-race food was really good -- eggs, grits, and sausage from a good restaurant in town. MILES better than last year (when they served disgusting Hardees burgers from steam boxes -- no I did not partake). I hung around for a while and talked to a few people, then rode home.


I was limited by poor swimming and stupidity in T1. Otherwise, I'm happy.


I certainly cannot complain about first in AG. That came as quite a surprise. In fact, I thought I was 4th and left the race after chatting to folks so that I could get home and spend time with the kids. And do bear in mind that in fact FOUR people aged 40-44 finished ahead of me. It's just that they were racing open.

I'm biased because this is the local race for me, but even though I can't stand pool swims, I like it. And as usual, setup events did a bang-up job of organization.