Milton Triathlon - Sprint Distance - TriathlonSprint

The swim went really well, especially compared to last year. From 30 minutes down to approximately 20. I can only guess my time since for some reason it looks like they screwed up my timing. If I had my GPS on for the swim I would have had a much better idea. But whatever, I'm not bitter. Sorta.

I swam wide pretty much all around. There weren't too many people flailing around me, although one guy just kept running into me, and I did get a few fists. I dunno. I got a good rhythm going too. I found a few feet to draft behind, and I even found a couple guys drafting me at one point. It worked well for them until near the end when I started getting tired and stopping. But whatever. Their problem. :)

I did start to get a little cramping in my left calf though. It sucked. Then for some reason my right foot kept shooting straight up in the air. I attribute that to getting used to the wetsuit, but maybe my leg was trying to scare away anybody else from punching me again.

There was a fair bit of chaffing on the right side of the back of my neck. Not sure how I can do longer distances if it's this bad already.

Other than be a better swimmer? Not too much really. Oh yeah, put my freaking GPS in my swim cap. And use some Body Glide on my neck (and anywhere else the suit might rub). There were a few other spots that were starting to get tender.

No cramping this time! I took my time with this. I didn't want an episode from last year. Had some trouble getting my wetsuit off my heels, but aside from that it went reasonably well. I spent a few seconds to think about whether I was missing anything.

It was a little chilly still, so I put a t-shirt on top. Not a good idea (again). It got stuck in the back, and I had to ride the first few k with it all tied up.

It took a while to get my shoes on, but it worked out okay.

On further analysis, my T1 time was actually in the top 25% of my age group! If I can manage to drop 30 seconds (which should be doable), I'll actually be in the top ten. Sweet.

Practice. Body Glide my ankles. Get faster and cleaner.

A nice ride overall. Not much to say really. Rode hard. Had some lingering tightness in my lungs. It was a slightly chilly and wet. My calf held up well too. I found good people to ride with, I didn't get passed by many people who weren't riding crazy psycho awesome tri bikes.

Ride faster?

I really needed to have my socks on for this run, so that sucked up a lot of time. Paused a little long again to think about what I was forgetting. Squirted a bit of goo, took a swig of water and a couple puffs of ventolin and took off.

This was a mid-pack performance (42/74 in my age group). Still lots of room for improvement. It's funny how the transition I thought I bombed turned out to be fast, and the one I thought was fast turned out to be a bomb. A 30 second improvement here would have put me in the top 25%.

Practice enough so that what I'm doing is instinctive: rack the bike, remove helmet, put shoes on. Maybe there's a better way to put socks on too. I tried rolling them on, but that just made them harder to figure out which end was up. Maybe for sprint-length events I'll try training without socks to see if there are any issues.

Also I could have saved considerable time by consuming some goo gel on my bike instead of wasting all that time while stopped. I've heard taping some gels to the top bar works well.

This sucked.

First off, by the time I got to the top of the hill I already started experiencing GI issues. I probably shouldn't have eating garbage like an idiot for the past few days. I had to do what I could to control the nausea and heartburn, and it only got worse after that.

Right around the 2k marker I started getting IT Band pain. I kept running though, more or less.

The next 4k were spent run/walking, trying to minimize the pain. It got progressively worse, until I actually had to stop upon exiting the wooded area. I stretched it, applied pressure to where the IT Band connects under the knee (just to the outside edge of the very top of my shin), and it helped enough to get me to the next spot where I could stop and restretch/reapply pressure.

With about 800m left, my training buddy Lisa caught up to me and yelled "come on George, let's go to the end!" That was enough to get me to forget about the pain for now. Maybe because it was all downhill, I somehow managed to keep up right behind her to the finish. Awesome!

Eat normally, and don't use "it's okay, I need the carbs" as an excuse. If you have to, use it as an excuse for a bad post-ride meal or three. Not for two bags of Tostitos, 200g of Jelly Beans and a steak sandwich just before bed. Seriously, I should have known better than that.

Train better/harder. Do what I can to prevent injuries. Stretch the hell out of my IT Band. Do something.

Ate a pulled pork sandwich. Yum.


The run. The great thing was I more or less held my own in the swim (and didn't even feel like I was going to drown that often), and on the bike I did really average. But the run was so bad. I passed nobody, and I even had people ask me if I was okay when I was stopped at the side stretching. So I'm definitely going to need a lot more training in the run. I'm thinking that I should probably put some intense focus on running and not worry as much about an overall structured training plan.

When my running is up to the point where I can run a continuous 10k with my heart rate comfortably somewhere between zones 2-3, then I can worry about the other sports. Maybe a short-term goal of a half-marathon (without having to walk) in the fall would do this.


Hard to say anything bad. It's slick and well organized. Oh crap, except for the timers screwing up my times. What's up with that? Was my battery in my transponder dead? Don't you think they should test this stuff out? Brutal. But whatever, at least I could more or less figure it out. :S

Edit: The timing chip guys found my transponder and I've got my actual times. I was pretty close with my guesstimating. My exact time was bang-on, and everything else other than the bike was within 15 seconds. Not bad. Standings still to be updated on the site, but I think they should be correct.