14th Annual Long Island Gold Coast Triathlon & Relay - TriathlonSprint

After my last race, I made a point of staying in the back and then heading out wide of the main pack until the first buoy to stay out of the scrum. I wanted to try and control my heart rate as well as get into a good rhythm. It definitely worked and I picked up steam as the race went on, though it did backfire on the last leg when I went careening off course a bit. I probably swam an extra 100 yards by doing all this but it was well worth it after the near panic attack my first open water experience gave me.

Swim more and learn how to sight more naturally. I realized how weak my upper body is compared to the good swimmers in my tri-class so I need to swim much more to improve. I also REALLY disrupt my stroke when I sight and it kills any momentum that I might happen to be carrying.

I took my everloving sweet time and once again was amused at how much water stays in my suit until I take it off. The pavement around my area was soaked.

Jog, display a little urgency and keep moving instead of using the time to catch my breath a little. That's what the bike should be for! ;)

I found my legs pretty quickly on the bike and tried to put them to use. I figured I might as well play to my strengths and do as much as I could on the bike.

The second lap was kind of frustrating because the later waves were coming out onto the bike course and it got very congested in many places, particularly the turns. Some poor woman even lost her pedal on the first turnaround and the resulting backup nearly caught 4-5 of us (it was a cicus act avoiding the tire of the guy in front of me as two lanes became one partial lane in the turnaround).

The hills were very gradual, for the most part, and I did a fairly decent job of passing people until the last long gradual hill where most of them caught and passed me back (like 5-7 of them...grrr!).

Lose weight, get more time in the saddle and get more fitness! Other than a little too much effort at times, this was as good as it could get for me currently.

Since I had to dump my speedlaces, you'd think I would remember to tie my shoes but I didn't. Then I had a little witty reparte with my wife who was yelling at me that I was slower than molasses. Yes, she was right but I couldn't tell her that!

Get more efficient in moving in and out of transition. By simply jogging, I could take quite a bit of time off both of my transitions.

I just didn't have it. In the past, when I feel awful, I can do 3 minute runs to 1 minute walks and come in a hair under 10 minute miles. I didn't even have that today. The vast majority of reason for this was because I haven't run much lately and the minority of it was the cold I had this week.

MORE RUN TRAINING AND FITNESS!

Waddled around with my wife and saw what sort of samples they were handing out. I can never eat at this point so I didn't even bother to check out the post-race spread but I did hear there were bagels.


My lack of training. Now that my knee is starting to feel better, I need to get at it.


For the number of people at this race, it is fairly well run and newbie friendly. The road is rough and can get crowded in later waves and it isn't the most scenic race but they make the best of what they have to work with.

I doubt any of them will see this but kudos to the TriLatino race team, who were out in full force, to both run and volunteer at the race. Their enthusiasm defintely added to the race and brought a smile to many of our faces.