Nation's Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

We were in wave number 9. Start of the swim was great, just foccused on pacing with one other guy. Then back off and paced him for a while. Felt good in the water. Then, we started catching up the other. Then it became a hell of a lot more dodging people, running some over, very frustrating. The total I think was just over 5500 athletes. Sighting was great, because buoys were hugh, over 8ft tall by 6x6 feet square. Awesome buoys. But overall, I did swim 3 min faster than last year. Tried a new position, and worked a hell lot more. Made first 25 yard more challenging with crowd of 250 athletes in my wave, but after that, was awesome till crowded. very happy for the amount of training I did.

Train more, and find a way of swimming into crowded people zone.

First, due to size of T1/T2, it was really long. Then with the rain, wet grass, etc.. you all get the gist, it was very challenging. My wet suit got beyound stuck on my legs, calf and ankles. Ugh!!!! :(
Then placed my helmet on and water poored all over my sunglasses and my head. had to dry, clean the fog of my glasses.
Then clean mud of cleats and try to stay on thicker grass to run outside, and off the mud puddle. Really nasty, and I was early into the transition. Still another 4000 athletes behind my. Ouch!

This was my first mud, grass transition and with rain the whole time. Great learning time. Get water bucket in the future to rinse foot. Shoes were soaked fm being on the bike. Interesting. But work it through. Just took a whole lot longer.

Happy overall with the bike session today. Felt good, my lower back never kicked in. Something has to be said with yoga I've been taking. Course was realy wet, but just slowed down srasticaly as advised by the volunteers. With tough and slippery conditions, I still went 9 minutes faster than last year, so very happy.

Practice more on wet course. Handling a bike is very different compared to all the dry riding I've done.

This transition was again about finding my running gear inside the trash bag that I had to try to keep my gear dry. Sock were good. Forgot to prepare my fuel belt. Opps.

Make sure that all my gear was put together before the race. Again, it was pooring rain, and drizzling. Hard to tell, except have different trash bags for the T1 and T2 gear, and label them as such. Should be easier next time.

Walked through the aid stations, and kept mostly a good jogging pace on the rest of the run course. Felt really good overall, and very surprised to to myself. Also ran about 10 minutes faster than last year with no running in over 9 months, so very happy with it.

Oh yeah, got to run accross the finish line with my son, and it was awesome.

More time on the elyptical and threadmill. I really need to attack my cardio for running seriously and focus on the form and pace.,

Walked around the finish line. Then to the bike to get it. Hydraded, then walked back to the hotel with a starbuck's stop as a reward. Woohoo!!


Definitively my cardio training baseline. I mean I had almost no training for this race, and decided within the last two week from all my travel to start training.
Need to also really focus on the run portion, and work on all my transitions to make sure they all get faster.


Now, lets also be realistic. The race started late, only because they waited for the intensity of the rain to taper off. Race was started about 24 minutes late. This was due to weather. Great race overall, and need to keep doing it every year. Really fun.