Chaska River City Days Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

My goal for the swim was to keep my splits under 2:00/100y, push hard through the 1st half and stay smooth and relaxed for the 2nd. This was my first ever time-trial style start. It was nice to have people spread out from the beginning rather than throwing elbows for the first 100 yards. My wave was one of the last to go, so there were plenty of swimmers already in the water. I tried to stay to the outside to keep away from the heaviest traffic.

Not much. I wasn't expecting to do as well as I did. I opted to use my wetsuit and was a little warm prior to the start, but didn't feel over-heated during the race.

No real issues here. I put my shoes on in transition rather than strapping in on the bike. I suppose I could have saved a few seconds doing it the flashy way, but didn't want to over-complicate things.

Practicing the flying-mount may speed things up by a few seconds, but I've already slimmed down the process quite a bit. If I do the race again next year, I'll have to squeeze a couple transition practice days into my schedule.

Last year, my pace was 17.4 mph. This year, I wanted to bump it up to 18.5. I had a bit of trouble getting into a rhythm during the uphill. But, again, since they did a time-trial start, there was a steady steam of cyclists both ahead and behind me. I just tried to reel people in one at a time. I still got passed by plenty of carbon fiber steeds, but that's to be expected. In the end, I was both surprised and pleased that I did as well as I did.

When I set up my Garmin prior to the race, I forgot to enable the multi-sport option. The end result was that all of my data for the bike was formatted as if I was running. Whoops. I never got my current speed during the bike, but at least I got my mile split to know whether I was speeding up or slowing down.

The biggest issue here was getting my socks on. It probably added a good 20 seconds onto my time, but I wasn't going to risk getting blisters. Those suck.

Last year, I ran an 8:52 average split, so this year, I was aiming for 8:30-8:45. The uphill at the start sucks. There's no way around it. I just had to keep reminding myself that it would only get easier. Once up the hill I started to feel really hot for the first time that day. Fortunately a volunteer gave me a gi-normous glass of water at the halfway point. Some went in my mouth, but most of it went down my back. Getting cooled off REALLY helped me feel stronger. I kicked it up a gear and headed for the downhill. I haven't run an 8:10 split in years, so today's results felt great.

I suppose I could always push harder on the uphill. But I think the only way I'll speed for this one is by training more. Hopefully, next year my splits will be somewhere in the 7s.

I hung around to cheer the other riders and sucked down some more fluids to cool off.


There's always room to improve my fitness level, that seems to be the biggest limiting factor at this point.


I like this race. It's just the right size and is on a really fun course. Who am I to argue with negative splits on both the bike and the run? They upped their game this year with color-coded age groups (last year as BYO-Swim Cap). I also like the time-trial start as a change of pace. They even had meals for everyone after the race. I also loved that they had race results available immediately after the race and posted by 2pm the same day.