Pumpkinman Triathlon Festival - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I started swimming in February of this year so I don't have the experience of other swimmers. I was tentative about placing myself anywhere but in back of my very large swim wave. This turned out to be a mistake as the 1st 400M involved a lot of contact with slower swimmers positioned in front of me.

Overall I was very happy with my technique. My plan was to treat the swim as a warm up, hold my reaches forward, and be fresh for the bike. I did this and also beat my goal by over 4 minutes!

Be more confident and not start way back of such a large group.

My transition times where something I wanted to work on. They were very slow in the 2 sprints I did before this HIM. My T1 time was almost 1 minute longer than most finishers in front of me. I'm just not as smooth as others I saw around me.

Run faster to the Transition area. Practice taking my wetsuit off more before the race.

I am very pleased with my bike performance. The bike was a blind spot for me not having ever ridden more than 50 miles at any time (yes, I know this was foolish). I broke down and bought a tri bike a couple of weeks ago against my original plan of waiting another year. I'm glad I did because being in the aero position feels so much more efficient than my road bike-at least on a course like this one.

1)Train more on my tri bike(not really my fault since I didn't have one).
2)Do 50+ rides on the weekends.

I felt pleased with the T. Much better than my efforts at the 2 earlier sprints I did.

Nothing

This was my strength coming into tri's. Over a year ago, it was the only 1 of the 3 that I actually did. Having run 1/2's and marathons multiple times I may have been a bit too sloppy in my lack of any meaningful bike/run brick training. My legs were not happy with my somewhat lackadaisical training here!
Unfortunately, the repetitive back and forth structure of the run didn't help to distract me from the pain.

Brick work with Bike/Run combos.

Plopped down on my butt for a post race massage. The massage rocked and was a great (many others too) aspect of this race.


Lack of structured HIM training plan. I winged it basically. Also, lack of experience with the HIM and tri's in general.


Overall, as a newbie I am pleased with the day and getting hooked on tri's!