Lake Sammamish Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Well, there’s absolutely no way the swim was 400m, which was alright, I guess. Blows my mind how many people do an event like this, though, and don’t bother to prepare for swimming in the least. I broke free of the rest of the pack, and I think I was leading heading into the first buoy, and then somebody grabbed my leg, and another guy (not the one who grabbed me) broke free. I was content to just put in a good effort, as shortly thereafter (maybe 3min into the swim) we ran into the wave in front of us. Really? I’m going twice as fast (if not faster?)? Oh well. Hopped out of the water with a guy I had sized up in my AG (who was on the same rack as me), and we headed to transition. All-in-all, probably lost about 20-30 seconds because of my inability to keep swimming around people; need to practice more!

Swim harder. Definitely could've gone 10 seconds faster at least if I had actually pushed myself, and wasn't afraid of hyperventilation.

Wetsuit got stuck on my feet, and I realized I had put my timing chip OVER the foot… D’oh! All the while, the AG guy I had marched into T1 with was getting further away. I probably lost 30-40 seconds on him in T1; it’ll get better!

Need to practice transitions.

I had been putting a lot of miles on the bike, and was eagerly anticipating this race, to compare to my Lake Samish sprint stint from a few weeks prior, and the Lake Meridian Olympic seven days before. It got off to an auspicious start, as there is essentially a no-passing zone for the first two miles, and I was stuck going 21 on flats, but once it straightened out, I was able to start cruising. I passed probably 100 people over the course of the bike, and wasn’t passed once. Besides a gear-changing hitch on the single hill of the course, I couldn’t have performed better. Right after the turnaround, I passed the AG guy I had been tracking since the start of the race, and figuring we were duking it out for top prize, put myself in the hurt cave to pass him. Looking at my splits, I averaged something like a 23.7 for the second half of the bike, and felt absolutely awesome coming into T2.

Not get stuck behind slow people? Get better at gearing too.

Kind of sucked it up a little bit here. Got my shoes on fine, but then started fiddling around with my Garmin (which I couldn’t pop on to my wrist), and I couldn’t close my racing belt for whatever reason. My AG competitor came into transition about 20-30 seconds behind me, and left at least 5 seconds ahead of me. D’oh.

Pretty straightforward run through some sweet fields. Caught my AG competitor right away, and started pushing hard. Again, I passed a TON of people in prior waves, without getting passed myself. Kept myself around 6:00-6:10 miles for the first two and a half miles, but eventually I passed the last person within a minute of me, and with a half mile to go, completely lost motivation to kill myself. Crossed the line with it reading 1:12:XX, and knew I had scored myself a pretty sweet time.Run splits mixed with my T2, so I'm guesstimating a 19:30, which makes sense based on the gap to the AG guy I passed.

Motivate myself to run harder... hard to do when there was nobody near me, but I need to keep the wave concept in mind. I might've been able to catch the guy in front of me.

Nada. Changed right away, and ate some PB+Js. Awesome!


Maybe sleep, and training time. Congestion (swim and bike) might have cost me a minute or two, and I should be able to cut a minute on transitions, but other than that, not a whole lot to do.


Well set-up course, and lots of food at the finish. Awards was pretty cool too, but a TON of timing screwups which kind of annoyed me. I would've liked to know my run split. Good race though, will do it again next year to compare times!