Toyota U.S. Open Triathlon Olympic - TriathlonOlympic

Tried to minimize damage on the swim. I know it's my weakest discipline and over 4x longer than my longest race previously so I swam pretty easy. Just kept my pace but I didn't sight often enough. My Garmin 310xt on swim mode shows my distance to be about 1900m so I added another 400m or so to the course. I knew I was in trouble when I popped up and a kayak was essentially in my way since I was veering badly of course. I also got a nice hit on my face that knocked my left goggle out of alignment so I had to stop and fix that. Had some waves on one portion of the course and it was coming from the side I breath on (the right).

I need to spend all winter working on my swim. I'd like to be somewhere closer to average on the swim as I think I'm giving up too much by being so slow in the water. Still in bottom 15% of swim overall - the only good thing is that I wasn't too tired coming out of the water.

Very long run from swim-out to the bike rack (and uphill to boot...the 'uphill' theme will be a constant throughout this race). I could've done this transition a little bit faster (probably about 10-15 seconds) but struggled a bit with removing my wetsuit, and then also decided to put my bike shoes at the rack. Was worried about my right leg so I didn't want to push too hard and running in bike shoes was a bit slippery, especially downhill. However, I decided to wear the shoes since I had never practiced going up a steep hill with just having my feet on top of my shoes since there was no time to be able to get my shoes on before the steep uphill.

Run a little bit quicker from Swim Out, practice getting wetsuit off while putting on shades/bike helmet, and learn to go up a steep hill with my feet on top of my shoes, getting strapped in after the climb.

Since this was my first Oly, I rode a bit conservatively and maintained a fairly pain-free pace. Had a lot of fun racing 2 other cyclists (both on tri-bikes) as we kept about the same speed but I would pass them on the hills but could not overcome their aero advantage on downhills and long fast straights. There were a lot more tri-bikes at the Olympic level ( plus stronger athletes vs local sprint triathlons and I didn't do as well overall on the bike as I did in my past sprints). This is my last race without a bit more aero help - tri-bike and aero helmet next year! Had a couple of electrolyte tabs about mile 2 and took a Hammer Gel about 5 miles into the ride, and went through a bottle of Heed.

Push a little bit harder (just marginally), and get better aero equipment. Train for longer time trial effort. I'm putting my cycling on maintenance mode over the winter to work on my swim and run.

T2 wasn't bad, except for the fact that I almost forgot to remove my helmet so that cost me a couple of seconds. Did a fancy dismount and felt pretty good. Struggled a little bit getting one of my feet off my shoe coming in but wasn't bad.

Remember to get helmet off quickly (unbuckle while running would be better).

This was the bummer for me. I made a mistake of running too hard on my last 'hard' workout on Monday and strained something on my right leg. I knew I was altering my gait to compensate and I can feel a cramp coming on so I made myself back-off and just go for a finish and not risk getting a bad injury. Fortunately, I was still able to run a decent pace but did not make my goal of 50 minutes. The hard course and not being 100% with my right leg prevented that but I was happy since I didn't seem to be too beat up at the end. Took a couple of electrolyte tabs about mile 2.

Don't try silly stuff like running hard (like a couple of miles at 7:00 pace when your stand-alone 5K pace is 7:20) less than a week before the race. I am now respecting my run training and will be more disciplined and patient moving forward. Given the conditions, I was fairly happy with this run and was capable of going a little harder in the last couple of miles in the future.

Walked a bit after the finish chute but felt pretty good. Headed straight to port-a-potty since I've been holding the liquids in since the start of the bike leg.


Swim training - bottom 15% in the swim- I was in the Top 44% overall, Top 35% on the bike, Top 41% on the Run so the swim really prevented me from being closer to breaking into Top 40% overall. Additional aero help on the bike will also help speed. Finally, being 100% fit for the run would have helped by at least a couple of minutes.


This was my first big race and it was well put-together. Lots of on-course volunteers and everything flowed smoothly. From the moment I checked in to get body-marked, to the transition set-ups (every position on the rack was numbered), and all through the race (great signs, volunteers), it was great! It was a hard course but I'm glad that I got a chance to do my first Olympic-distance race at a first-rate event like this one. The nice weather didn't hurt either!