North Country Triathlon - Sprint Distance - TriathlonSprint

I was actually pleased with my swim, especially since I haven't been in the pool much. I was actually 5 minutes faster than the last time I did this race. Part could be due to the wetsuit this time around, but I think the course was probably short this year.

The boat launch start was painful - the water in the launch chute was easily 10 degrees colder than the rest of the lake. My feet were numb when we started! The waves were a little rough going out, pushing me toward shore and away from the buoy. But I got that straightened out pretty quickly and the waves were awesome on the way back in!

Well, probably get in the pool occasionally prior to the race.

I actually did ok getting the wetsuit off. I just couldn't get my darn shirt on! It kept getting all rolled up and tangled in back.

Zipper shirts!!

This is where I ran into problems. It POURED during the whole ride. POURED.

I started heading uphill and around mile 2 started to feel sick. Tried to focus on my breathing to make it stop. I think I was focusing so much on that and not on where my gears where that my chain popped off at mile 3. I had trouble getting it back on in the downpour. Finally got the chain on which was bad because I lost time, but good because my stomach felt much better with the break. I got going again and realized I couldn't get out of my middle ring in front. I was ok there for the uphill but couldn't take advantage of a lot of the downhill without my outer ring.

I also had to brake a lot on the downhill. I mentioned it was pouring, right? There were some sections of crappy roads, I wasn't clipped in and my feet were sliding off the pedals with every bump. I was afraid of slipping right off my bike on a really fast downhill section so I had to slow them down. Also, there were 4 or 5 signs in that area that said "Test brakes NOW", "Slow down NOW" and "Slow down NOW, Sharp turn ahead".

I am a scaredy cat rider and with the rain, I was doomed to have a slow ride.

I think it was a pretty smooth T2, actually.

Not my best run, but not my worst. I had a hard time putting my crappy ride out of my head at first. And I was worried about getting sick on the run, after how I felt in the beginning of the bike. I think I held back too much though because I felt great running to the finish line.

The rain had stopped for the run too, which was nice. It stayed nice and cloudy. But my shoes were soaked, probably weighing a ton. And squished with water the entire distance. Ugh.

As I say in every race report, RUN MORE!

Walked around with the kids, wolfing down pizza.


Definitely lack of training. And the weather, but you can't help that.

Honestly, considering I wasn't able to train as much as I would have liked due to surgery this spring... and even though I know I can do better on this course... it was probably not too bad of a performance.


I saw the weirdest thing at the run turn point... there was NO ONE to make sure we actually went all the way around the cone! Maybe they were short on volunteers due to the crappy weather?