Heart of the Lakes Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Run and dolphin dives into the water. I was out in front of my heat pretty quickly. This is the first race in a while where I've not been in the first wave. So it didn't take very long at all before I started catching up to the stragglers in the earlier waves. It was like swimming a slolem course now and then. Nobody was on my pace at all, so there was no chance of drafting at all. I tried not to crawl over anyone, but there was some bumping especially around the corners. I was a little dismayed to see that I swung a bit wide around the second corner, but I probably didn't lose more than a couple seconds over that. As far as I could tell, I wasn't passed by anyone in my heat.

Sighting a little better after the turns

Decent transition. Sat to put on socks. I probably could have gone without socks for this short race, but didn't want to chance it since I'd not trained without socks at all.

Tri-specific bike shoes seemed to make a big difference in getting in and out of the shoes when they were clipped to the bike. I like this.

Maybe go without socks

This leg went better than I thought it would. My goal was to keep my average speed over 20 since I've done almost no training this year. There was a little wind and a long false flat for the first little ways. I was passing many people from the previous heats almost right away. Once the wind was no longer at my head and things flattened out a little bit, my speed went up. I figured that it was a short race so I could pretty much go all out. So I pushed most of the way. Nobody from my wave passed me here either. Cruised on into transition. Again, tri-specific shoes seem to really make a difference. I like it.

Train more. I think I could have kicked this up even more.

A good transition. This is the only part of the race that my little brother was faster than me. He didn't have to change shoes though. Ha!

Nothing

Started off relatively slow, but picked up the pace to a medium plod after about 1/4 mile. Alternately thought about walking and trying to push the pace the whole race. Saw one guy from my heat pass me. I told him that I thought he was in first place in our heat, but he sounded very skeptical, so maybe I saw the number on his leg wrong. Was able to pick up the pace a little bit on the way back after the turn-around and saw my brother maybe 10 minutes behind me on the run and cheered him on. Felt relatively good coming into the finish and finished strong. Felt queasy at the end.

Believe it or not... train.

stagger about. Get a hug from my wife and kissed my son on the head


The only real activity I've done in the last 10 months or so is hashing (running with beer). I've gone swimming twice, and running (without beer) and biking about the same number of times. Needless to say, I was VERY surprised at my performance. Work and having an infant in the house kept me from being able to train this last year. I think things will be different this off-season and I should actually be able to build a base and prepare for next year. I'll drop my run and bike times yet!


Very nice race, though much larger participation than I envisioned. Great volunteers. Nice course. I'd do this race again in a heartbeat. Had to leave (fussy baby) before door prizes, but that's life. Sorry that I only saw one BT person. Maybe we'll be able to stick around for grilling next time around.