Kelowna Apple Triathlon - Olympic Distance - TriathlonOlympic

The water was very choppy and I have never swam in these conditions. I had a lot of trouble navigating the course and breathing calmly with all the big waves. Although nearly everyone wore a wet suit, I'm glad I didn't - many swimmers were overheating as the water was only .5 degrees C below the temp at which wetsuits would be illegal.

Practice more open water swimming before the race.

Accidentally put my shoes on before my pants. Oops

I was way too slow in T1.

Wear shorter pants so they are easier to put on. Maybe get one of those one-piece suits for next time. And get clipless pedals - I've been using toeclips forever, it's time to change it up.

Very strong winds in laps 2 and 3 made it very difficult to gain speed even going downhill. The course was really fun though and everyone played nice, except for one fast rider who passed me unreasonably close on the right, when there was plenty of room on the left.

Set up a water bottle on my handlebars to make hydrating faster.

My transition time is not on my race results for some reason.

I am a very weak runner so I would run 5 min, walk 1 min, the whole way. My 71 minute time was expected (actually I thought it would be worse). Kept a 7 min/km pace almost the whole way, which given my poor training was pretty alright.

Train longer distances. My body gave up after 7 km because this was the length of most of my training runs.

Walk around, stretch quads etc.


Not enough intensity in training. I probably trained enough hours, but didn't focus my workouts properly. I bet I could take 20 minutes off my time with slightly better training.


My first Oly was a success. All I wanted to do was finish in under 4 hours. I'm happy to have a benchmark from which to measure future performance.