Westside YMCA Triathlon - TriathlonMini Sprint

Actually finished the swim in 3:20'ish. The run to the timing mat was halfway down the (long) run to transition. Still not smoking fast or anything, but good for me, and importantly, I felt great coming out.

Nothing comes to mind, get better swimming (I'm working on it!!)

Ok... so I don't want to think this of somebody else, but "somehow" my strap for my bike shoe had actually came undone. I've never seen this before, and couldn't get it to do it again afterwards even with all my strength pulling on it... so I can only guess either it worked its way out on it's own sitting on a towel, or somebody messed with it. Regardless, getting the strap back in was a job of itself, and it really killed my T1 time.

One MORE last check of all my stuff I suppose.

Also, I've been practicing putting my shoes on ON the bike, but I was timid to do it with all the rocks in T1's pavement.

Came off the bike with the fastest bike split of the day... just re-assuring that I need to become a pure roadie... ;)

Otherwise, bike was mildly technical (I heard some people complaining about it) but I never found any of the turns very dangerous, even at speed. All those handling drills are starting to pay off it seems.

I kept getting stuck behind people who would "try" to pass somebody, then just fall in step beside them. Very frustrating. One guy towards the end I believe was actually trying to block me. So annoying. Sorry if I yelled at anybody haha.

-More Handling drills to take the corners sharper and faster
-More threshold / Vo2 work to get my out of saddle efforts up

Again, I left my shoes on instead of taking them off and running barefoot because of the pavement. My T2 time is still about 20 seconds off of the fastest though, so I need to work on my t2 some more.

Get my feet tough enough to run without socks... that would help a LOT.

Time to run some people down. I felt good going into the run (well... as good as you can feel at times like that.) and had one thing in mind... break 40 minutes overall.

I don't know that the course was really 2.5 miles long... my time seems unrealistic for my abilities... whether that means I just need to re-assess what "my abilities" are or somebody needs a new measuring stick... I'll leave up to interpretation. I see Andres, on his way to winning his age group... we slap hands in congratulations to each other.

As I make the last turn I see that my watch shows 38:2x... I have around a minute and a half to cross the finish... Now two choices come to my head.
1.) Continue running my current (hard, for me) pace... hoping that 1:30 is enough time to get me across before 40:00
2.) Start my sprint now...without the finish line in sight and risk completely blowing myself up and walking across the finish line like a dummy.

"Nut up or shut up"

I start sprinting. It is terrible. I'm not 100% sure how far I need to go. A volunteer sees me in my Herculean effort and gives a supportive "wow, way to go." I nod and blurb something incomprehensible. I turn out of the trees and see the arches of the finish. I'm still a ways off. Time is ticking down, I've passed 39 minutes. My legs are on fire and my blood is battery acid. I grit and continue on my silly looking sprint (a mix of sprinting and doubling over for breathe) I cross under the arches. 39:40 on the dot. I double over and laugh to the thought that I could have possibly taken it a bit easier.

I don't know. haha get faster.

Jogged around a bit, stretched, walked up to get some smoothie king (well done Race Day Events)


Some dismal Transitions, still needing to work on my swim speed and bike handling skills.


One year later, I went from middle of the pack in the beginner division to 5th overall and 1st in my age group. Hard work does pay off sometimes.

RaceDayEvents of course put on a great show. Everything was well set up. Can't wait til' next year.