Tri for Real #1 - Olympic Distance Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

Started out really well and stayed with the middle of the pack for the first 500 yards until we hit the first buoy. I sighted off the two nuclear reactors (yes, crazy huh?) for the first 500 yards and it made it so easy. The next buoy (a white Red bull triangle) was hard for me to see, as the sun was above it and I got too much glare. I couldn't seem to find a good landmark to sight off of, so started sighting off other swimmers. This time not so good as they were not going too straight. Darn. Kept bumping into the same woman with booties on and kept trying to swim away from her but for some reason, we just kept veering into each other. My wetsuit started to feel like it was squeezing the breath out of me, and perhaps I was tiring.

I did much better after the turn and could just sight off of the finish chute and beach area. I think the "bootie" woman and I stood up at about the same time and looked at one another and just laughed.

Overall a pretty good swim. I never went to backstroke and only did my breaststroke tarzan thing 3 or 4 times. I would have liked to just swim the full distance the way I swam the first one third, but overall not so bad.

I think maybe I need to do some longer intervals, to build up endurance like 3 x 500 or 2 x 1000 at medium/hard effort instead of so much 10 x 100.

Forgot to put body glide on ankle/calf area and wetsuit stuck. Had to sit and yank it off. Dang it.

For some reason I could not get my left foot clipped in at the mounting area so just pedaled away with both unclipped and eventually figured it out.

Bodyglide!

Really good bike for me. The course is pretty flat with rollers. But no real hills to speak of...kind of perfect for an all out effort. Never got passed...but I was in the last wave and probably in the last third of the swim pack. Story of my tri life!

Drink more. I drank about one half of my one hour of Infinit, and maybe about 6 oz of water. Not enough as it was starting to get hot. I think I need to consider mounting the Profile design aerodrink on the tri bike. It is hard for me to stay aero and reach the rear mount and feel safe.

Pretty good, I grabbed a gu, and stuck in my tri top pocket and the little bottle of water from the hotel. Put Garmin watch on prior to running as I am clumsy sometimes.

Couldn't tell if the bike computer turned off when I pressed stop at the dismount. Thought twice about reaching over the rack and hitting the stop button on the bike computer but didn't want to knock over the bike next to me and didn't want to have a long T2 and have SOMEONE give me a hard time about it!

Turn off the dang bike computer, I got back from the run and it was still going!

Legs felt pretty wobbly after the hard effort on the bike, and things in my vision seemed a little like "stars". I realized I needed to drink water and fast! So grabbed water from the volunteer at the run out and drank it...ah, much better.

This course was very hot and it was over 80F by the time we finished, not sure about during. There is no shade and there are some really good hills especially at the beginning. It is a trail run, so I had to keep my steps a little shorter in order to prevent the dreaded twisted ankles that I am prone to. But got into a really good rhythm, and tried to keep the effort strong. Started flagging a bit at the turnaround and remembered I had a gu. Good thing I had the little water bottle, as I pretty much drank half of it to get the gu down. Felt so much better after that, I ran it in as hard as I could. Passed two people in my age group about a half mile from the finish, so it felt really good to have pushed a bit beyond my comfort zone.

Never got passed here either, but somehow wish there was someone faster than me to push me to go harder.

I have this nagging feeling that I could have gone harder. 152HR is zone 3 for me and I really need to learn to push to Z4 and see where it takes me in an oly. Treat it like a real 10k.

Drink more on the bike! Push harder, I can always back off if it is too much.

Just a little walking to slow my heart back down.


Swim is still below average, however it was a much better swim than oceanside, so I will not complain.

Bike was awesome and run that followed was pretty good. Perhaps should have done a few bricks prior to this race, last brick was at my last race in March! Doh!


Really like this race and small community feel. Post race food is good with pasta, fruit, salad and cookies! Nice that they give out awards five deep in each age group.