Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

What a disappointment! I put a lot of effort into becoming a better swimmer this year and it paid off...in the pool. This was only my second triathlon and in the first I got a little freaked out in the swim. It happened again and I can't explain why. There was some mild chop and it seemed that each time I breathed on my right side that I inhaled the entire lake. I also started toward the back which may have been a mistake since at the start I couldn't navigate around the people ahead. Ended up doing the backstroke for the last half, which actually didn't seem too bad.

Need to practice open water swimming. Start closer to the front next time.

Haven't mastered the art of having shoes clipped in on bike yet. Regardless I think this went pretty well.

Loved this bike course! The event manager said it was kinda hard but I didn't think so at all.

I would have enjoyed it even more had I not been a bonehead and crosschained up one of the hills which caused my chain to fall off...twice. The first time I must not have put it on quite right because I went about 20 feet before it fell off again. Hard to get back going in the middle of a hill too. My guess is that it cost me at least a minute

Try not to be an idiot when changing gears. My training paid off as I felt very strong on the bike despite everything.

Haven't mastered the flying dismount yet and I have the nasty scar on my knee as proof. Scraped it up pretty good practicing before the race and decided to just go with what I'm comfortable with for now.

Work on flying dismount - on grass!

Wow, the first half of this run is kinda tough. Rather than concentrate on my pace I just focused on slowly picking off the runners in front of me. Got to the turnaround and my guess is the last half was about a minute faster than the first.

Start the run portion of brick workouts with a long hill.

Water, kiss from my wife.


Getting freaked out on the swim, I should have been at least two minutes faster there. Need to be smarter about when to switch rings on the bike.


Setup Events does a great job managing there events. The only problem I had was that I thought there was going to be a race meeting 15 minutes before and then the national anthem. I never heard any of it but I may have just missed it.