Buffalo Triathlon - Olympic Distance - TriathlonOlympic

Good grief! People need to learn to swim straight. If not straight, how about just not on top of me? That would be great. That was the most contact on a swim that I have had. One guy was on me for the first third of the swim. No matter what I did, I couldn't shake him. I may have sent a few rouge strokes his way, but he was relentless. Finally, I got rid of him and someone else jumped on my shoulder. Gah! Maybe it's the neon green. It's like a beacon for those people. I just kept swimming, trying to hold my line and shake off the hangers-on. Coming out of the water, I thought I was about 32 or 33. I had no idea I was under 30. Pretty happy with that.

Nutrition- a gel before heading down to the beach.

Invisibility. Then they couldn't find me and latch on like a remora.

Long way to transition. Long hill. Lots of walking. Once I finally got there, it went smoothly.

For the love of gawd, some people out there needed to take a bike handling course. Really! If you're going to enter a race, learn how to ride in a straight line. After the sprint turnoff it got a lot better. Now I could concentrate on actually racing instead of dodging people. Coming back into town was messy. We'll call it "cluster #1". Two way run traffic, a lane of bikes contained in cones, and two way car traffic all on a two lane road. Kind of scary. More on this later.

Nutrition- It was hard to even drink water with all the people out there. Finally in the "feed zone" on the out and back, I grabbed some gel. Tried out the new Powerbar drink. Kind of salty, but might be OK.

No idea. Perhaps not worry about other riders and just go hard from the start.

I didn't try to jump off the moving bike since there was so much traffic. There was also a steep hill leading to T2, so no need to biff it on the dismount. Once I switched shoes, I blanked on where the run out was. Total blank. Thank you to the dude who pointed me in the right direction.

Remember where run out is. I usually do a mental run through during the last few miles of the bike. This time I was concentrating on not wrecking. Took brain cells away from thinking about T2.

I started the run with the plan to just take it easy at a steady pace. This was not an A race, so no reason to kill myself out there. Sadly, there were no mile markers, so I had no real idea of where I was on course. Mile markers are a pretty good idea. I saw Jeremy before the sprint turnaround and he looked like he was doing OK. Maybe holding his arm funny, but I didn't think much of it. That's some foreshadowing for those of you who aren't literay types. I ran with a few different people and chatted a lot during our 6.2 mile journey. There are some pretty nice people in the back of the run. You fast folks don't get to chat it up, now do you? It was hot and there were hills, but in all it was a pretty decent effort for me.

Not much really. Maybe less chat would have brought me in a few seconds faster. Maybe not. In all, it was a good run and I felt fine during and after. Another race with no pain or soreness. That's a win, for sure!

Met Jeremy at the finish. As we walked to get some water, I noticed his arm was in a splint. Wait! It wasn't in a splint earlier. WTF? Here's the story. As Jeremy was approacing "cluster #1", he was passing a slow dude on a bike. Slowdude moved left for some unknown reason and Jeremy moved left to avoid a crash. That put him in the path of a road barricade which was blocking the road for some reason. He clipped the barricade with his left hand. He stayed upright and rode into T2 unable to use that hand. Must have been a tough time getting the bike stopped at the bottom of the hill. He ran with it, but went to the Med tent after the finish. The medics thought it was probably broken, splinted him up so he could wait for me. We made the decision to go back to Rochester instead of going to the ER in Buffalo. Of course traffic on 494 was another cluster (#2 of the day), so it took us about 3 hours to get from the campground to the hospital. Another 3 hours at the ER and we have an appt for surgery on Wed. for plates and screws to set two broken bones.


Too many people. The bike course was a nightmare. Several times I had to slow down to dodge people and that's just not fun.


We will not be going back to Buffalo. Even though it's a well-run race on a nice course, it's too crowded to be safe. I had a couple close calls, but Jeremy's accident was too much. We'll go somewhere else that weekend next year. If they change the course or lower the entry limit, I'll reconsider.