Bear Lake Brawl Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

Felt pretty good considering I haven't swam in 7+ mos! I did notice that my arms got tired pretty fast, but I just took it easy and tried to be as efficient in the water as I could be. Made sure I just stayed calm and kept a steady breathing tempo, and it seemed to help. 2nd loop started to feel better and I was passing people :) Awesome.

Actually train for the swim. Who knows what I could actually do if I really trained for the swim! This was actually a better swim than my last real Oly distance! Go figure.

T1 is always a bit sloppy. It's hard to get the wet wetsuit off, so I hardly try to make it fast. Then you have to wash the sand off of your feet and put socks on your wet feet. It just sucks. One highlight was that I didn't exit the water feeling winded or light headed, so I wasn't struggling with that. Felt great when I headed out on the bike, and it turns out that my T1 time wasn't too bad anyway.

Come up with a better strategy for getting into my bike gear/getting wetsuit off.

Started out fairly easy on the bike trying to work slowly into a good pace and not burn out too fast. By about mile 4 I was pushing about 22-23 mph and finding my groove. Then the hills came and slowed me down. I was passed by a couple of the elite guys and a couple others on the hills. Managed to catch back up with the other guys, but the elite guys dusted me. Passed the turnaround by about 1/2 mi because it wasn't well marked/no volunteer -- decided to turn around once I realized that the barricade I saw @ 12.5 was probably it. So I ended up doing about 1 extra mile. Headwind on the way back, but still managed to keep my pace fairly high, and hit some good speeds on the downhills. Avg'd about 21 for the distance overall, so I was very happy, esp. considering I had kept my HR down below 160 for the whole ride!

Maybe push a little harder. Train hills so I don't get passed on them. Turn around at the turnaround...

This seemed like a pretty good transition to me. I felt like I did a great job of getting out of my bike gear and into my running shoes and heading out.

Get better at remembering to get out of my shoes before I get to transition; getting better at unstrapping helmet while running.

This run was lousy. Right out of the gate, I wasn't feeling it. I think it was more mental than physical. I just bonked and struggled to find the willpower to actually run like I should have. It is so difficult to find the right run cadence after the bike.

Prepare better for the 10k distance after a swim/bike. Honestly I didn't do enough real bricks in training to get myself physically and mentally ready for this. Also, my run has fallen off a little, and the speed/endurance isn't where it was earlier in the year.

Crossed the finish line, and then immediately went to transition area, gathered my stuff and headed over to my trailer, so I could find some recovery food/drink. There was no finish-participant gathering area after the finish... if there were bananas/oranges, I didn't find them. Very poor setup. Headed back over, did some leg stretching and waited for prelim. results. Wasn't on the list, so I asked Milliseconds why. They said it was because I wasn't "registered in the system". I had times, but no name, so they wouldn't show. They said I'd have to wait until that night for results... I asked, well how will you know whether I am an AG winner? I got a big SIGH from Noah (Milliseconds) and he reluctantly added me into the system giving me a time. Now, I know he was busy, but the timing is worthless if it isn't accurate. There were also many other discrepancies in the timing, not all Millisecond's fault, rather the result of the circumstances of the event. In any case, I didn't appreciate the unfriendliness. Esp. when I worked closely with Milliseconds in years past running THIS event...


My lack of preparation and mental willpower to push hard. I came with the attitude that I wasn't going to do that well anyway, so I might as well take it easy. Well, I just didn't want to endure the short 6 mi of pain on the run, so I walked a good portion of it. Can't really make any excuses, I just copped out.


This race did not go as well as it should have this year because of several factors -- new Half Ironman that added complexity to the race; rain and wind the night before; shortage of volunteers. As a result, many of the people went way too far on the bike because there were no signs/volunteers, so the results are less than accurate. Kind of takes the fun out of a race. The transition/finish area layout should have included a better post-race gathering area with food/water, and there should have been more aid stations with larger cups. I have high hopes that this race will improve in all of these areas next year to fix what happened this year. In many other areas, this race was great-- shirts were great, awards were awesome, and of course, the venue rocks. I'm also partial to this race, of course, so I'm not going to give it up just yet.