Mini MightyMan Triathlon - TriathlonMini Sprint

Seed myself better and get a better start - I hopped into the water and wasted time under water before starting my stroke.

With a constant, pouring rain, socks are a bad idea. I'm just saying. I also brought a long sleeve shirt to pull over my tri suit, but it took too much time and I abandoned it. For my first time, it wasn't bad!

Since I abandoned my sock idea, I wish I would have practiced running / biking without socks and prepared my shoes with body glide. I didn't get any blisters, but it would have been smart to do. I was also pretty cold without the long sleeved shirt but that will not be the case in future summer races. I was pretty happy, especially considering T1 could have taken 5:00 or more.

OK, 13 mph looks slow, but I had a mountain bike with knobby tires, and coming in to it I was convinced my bike split would be about 10 minutes slower than it was, so I was actually thrilled by this! Since I'm picking up a new Specialized in a week or so, this will be my last mountain bike tri barring an off-road race, but I was happy with my results.

Um, ride a road bike. Even better, a tri bike. I also would have made more effort to put on that long sleeved shirt in T1 because it was windy and wet and horrible out there.

This was fine. I remembered my race belt, which I was proud of.

This was the only disappointing part. Since I have a run background, I felt like I would rock this - and I did feel strong - but the split was slower than a lot of my training runs! I'm fine with it - most of my training runs aren't done after a hard swim and bike effort, after all - and I attribute a lot of it to the conditions (wind - mud - giant puddles - continuous rain). I still passed a lot of people here after passing just about no one on the bike.

Study the course better - I had no idea any of it was going to be on grass and fields, and that info was available to me. If I'd known, I would have at least worn trail shoes and been prepared for a messy run.

Walked around gathering my stuff, hanging out in the nice warm aquatic center, drinking boullion and eating a bagel.


It was my first time! So experience, definitely. My self-seeding needed to be better for the swim, and getting used to being aggressive about my swim position would help. Practicing transitions would be good, as would practicing without socks. The weather could have been better :) My new road bike will definitely vastly improve that bike split, and I'll worry about the finer points of transition (shoes on pedals, etc) then. Finally, I needed to save just a little bit to do my best on the run. But overall, I was really happy with my results! 15/26 for my age group, but overall / individual splits weren't posted.


I don't have anything to compare it to, and driving rain and wind kind of dampened any outdoor fun that might have been happening. Hot soup at the finish went down perfectly. This race would make an outstanding early season tune up for more experienced athletes training for a longer event later in the season, and obviously it was an ideal first race for a new triathlete. Recommended!