Long Island Gold Coast Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Quite a washing machine at the beginning, although I didn’t get hit hard or kicked. After the first 100y or so, things started to thin out and I got to the first marker in what felt like good time. I went a little wide around the buoy and settled into a good pace towards the next turn. My goggles were a little foggy and the water was a bit choppy, so I mostly followed the crowd, since I couldn’t see the marker too well at first. At about 2/3 of the way to the second turn, I started to pass people from the previous wave, then the one before that, and finally the BOP from three waves ahead, which is always encouraging.

When I made the turn towards the beach, I could feel the tide holding me back a little. I tried to focus on long strong pulls and making myself as streamlined as possible and I could feel myself cruising through the water. Eventually, I felt the sand under me, swam up to the beach and ran out. I checked my watch and it said, 14:00-something, which works out to about 1:36/100 so this was a good swim. My wife said she didn’t see many purple caps come out before me.


Swim more. I haven't been in the water since my last tri three weeks ago.

The time reflects a long run up the beach. I had a little trouble like always with my wetsuit, but overall not a terrible transition.

I had really planned to hammer this course, but, when I came out of T1 and went to merge onto the course, I could see that just staying safe was going to have to be job #1. The course was already packed with riders from the other waves—lots of hybrids, beach cruisers, etc. and even a couple of folding bikes with 20” wheels. I must have yelled “on your left!” about 1000 times. It was impossible to keep the required distance from the bikes in front of you—most of the time I was three wide—passing the person who was already passing someone else. I managed to maintain a pace of just over 20mph and I could have gone a lot faster, but it wasn’t safe to do so. I had one near accident when a woman on a folding bike cut me off, and another when a guy kept staring down at his pedals instead of watching where he was going and fading off his line into my path.
I was happy to get off the bike in one piece.

Considering that my rack was 20 feet from bike-in, this was not a good transition. There was a long run to run-out.

I don't know what happened, exactly, I had a little trouble with my speedlaces.

I felt ok on this run. I wanted to really hammer it, but I wasn’t really feeling up to it. There were lots of other waves in front of me, which gave me lots of rabbits and people to try to catch, which was nice. I don’t feel like I got passed by many people and in general, this was a good run. The course is a little different than last time, including the addition of a small hill at the 2.5 mile mark, which I was not expecting. It’s a very twisty, winding course, and there are no mile markers, so, other than checking my watch, it was hard to know where you were on the course and how much further you had to go.

I pushed pretty hard, but I didn't collapse or throw up, so I suppose that means I could have gone harder...

Had a couple of bottles of Zico (the coconut water stuff), which I didn’t mind, although I don’t know what this event has against good old fashioned sports drink—there was none on the course and none available afterwards. I had a few snacks—some granola bars, etc. Met my family and my friend who had finished his first race. We went to get our stuff out of transition while our families went to the beach. I was amazed they allowed us into transition while there were still people out on the bike course, but, as I said before, there was no security. The transition area was crowded with families, and other people. No one checked my number against my bike number or gave me a second look as I left transition.


I'm happy with my result, but I could easily have shaved a couple of minutes off my time if I could have gone faster on the bike. I spent large chunks of time up on the horns instead of in aero because of the crowded course and unsafe conditions.


I’m all for doing small, local events, but there’s a difference between “no frills” and a total disregard for safety. It’s mind-boggling to me that the Race Director would sign off on a race where you have 800 triathletes, plus duathletes and aquabikers all squeezed onto a race course that was less than five miles in length.

There is NO security at all in the transition areas. I could have walked out of there with any bike I wanted and no one would have noticed or said boo.

At a time when every other event is trying to minimize their environmental impact, the race has aid station volunteers pouring water from plastic bottles into plastic cups. Unbeleivable. Also, there's no sports drink on the run course, which is pretty amazing, considering it's a largely unshaded run in late June.

The only reason this race gets a 2 and not a 1 is that the venue is sort of nice and it's fairly convenient to NYC. But even with that, there's no way I'll do this race again. There really isn't anything good that I can say about it. Every aspect of it, from the website to packet pick up to check in to the event itself is at best poorly organized and at worst, irresponsibly unsafe. And the t-shirt's ugly too.