Life Time Fitness Triathlon - Sprint - TriathlonSprint

TT start around my AG. I was quick to run in and remembered that it drops off fairly quickly. I got a bit beyond knee deep and dolphin dove my way in. The first 200 was a solid effort, breathing was spot on, as was sighting. That is after I reached up to hit my Garmin in my swim cap, Yes... I forgot again, this time it was only about 20 seconds late, not the whole swim.

Sighting overall was pretty good, a lot of smaller buoys helped, plus dark tinted goggles kept the sun at bay. I swam past a good number of people quickly and settled in about half way out, after taking on a few waves from a wake from a spotter boat. After the first turn I was through a section of ladies who started before me and moving forward occasionally getting a glimpse of another silver cap. The parallel section was alright, sighting was average, breathing was not good. I started breathing to my right much more often because there were a lot of backstrokers that I had to navigate.

Final turn and the home stretch went well, only losing sighting once.

Good experience without a wetsuit and OWS for the first time. 100 time was slower than expected even without a wetsuit. I felt like I was moving along well, but unfortunately overall time was not what I wanted. Regardless, I felt amazing in the water, now to continue working on speed, hopefully drop times into the 1:30s without a wetsuit, or 1:20s with.

For the large transition, very happy with the time. I got in and out quickly, putting shoes in transition since I was right near the bike out.

Running to my bike I did forget that I needed to put my Garmin on the bike, so I clipped it on my wrist, but got it switched over when I ran out with the bike, so nothing lost here.

Learn to mount bike with shoes attached for further increases.

Where to begin... first couple of miles were good, passed some AGrs and got my pace settled in somewhat. I hit a bump, that I did not see and launched my waterbottle. Quickly remembering that I could get penalized for this, I quickly stopped, nearly 40 yards away, unclipped and ran back to get the bottle dodging bikers as I tried to run in my bike shoes. Back to the bike and getting going again. It took a few miles to get my bike legs under me. This was painful to have to start back up. Looks like it was around 1 minute from slowing down to almost back up to speed.

I re-passed some of the guys I had passed in the first two miles, and found a few more ahead of me. Wattage was 216, meh... Mentally I was hurting from having to stop and never quite shook it.

May look into a different bottle holder, I have no clue why it launched, but it threw me for a loop.

Push wattage, get over stuff that happens and move forward.

I decided to try and remove my feet from my shoes as I came in the last stretch. I have loosened and tightened them while moving before, but never removed my foot and pedaled on the top. Things went super well considering. It felt great to hop off at the line and run barefoot to my spot, which was a ways away.

I cannot think of much to do differently.

The run... ahh the run. I wasn't sure what to expect before the race, and after the bike issues, I was really not sure, but knew I needed to push to make up some time for the bottle fiasco.

Mile 1 felt good, it was congested on the path, but I made my way through, hunting down a few people ahead of me. I think the entire duration, I got passed by maybe 3 people. Physically I was moving, mentally I knew I had to push through it.

I tried to keep 7 minute miles, but looking at the Garmin export, looks like I was up and down speeds a lot. We were on the far side of the lake and the watch said 2.4 miles complete, but we looked significantly further than .6 miles away from the finish line which made me not push the last 1/2 as hard as I wanted.

Luckily someone who was probably on the long course based on his number, came by me and was right next to me. A quick comment that I liked his pace, and we stuck together to the end. We built speed to a sprint that I felt like could be disastrous if one of my leg muscles decided to stop racing, and then crossed the line!

After an unofficial result saying I ran 7:00/miles, I was slightly bummed because I wanted to go in the 6s. Seeing official results then made me happier with the 6:56! Another goal reached.

I think I need to run some more efforts/bricks to simulate a race. I need to figure out how long and how hard I can push mentally and physically because I feel like I am not mentally prepared for longer pushes at the end.

Walking with an iced towel on my head felt amazing. Some stretching and refueling!


Swimming effort - probably too comfortable
Learn to mount bike with shoes clipped in.
Water bottle mishap.
Mentally breaking through the mishap.
Making the run hurt and finishing strong leaving it all out there.


First time at LTF tri, it was well organized, except they need more crowd control on the bike, thus explaining some collisions on course. For an event of this size, it was done well.