Chisago Lakes Sprint Triathlon - Triathlon

Lots of chop and I drank a lot. Foggy start and it was hard to see the course. An out and back. I am kind of pissed--the swim must have been longer than 440 because there is no way my pace was 2:24.Even if I veered off course, there's no way I'd have been that slow.

Nothing. I was smart this time and positioned myself right in front. I went out first and fast. Dolphin dives and swam as soon as it was deep enough. Swam right until I touched the bottom. No one even touched my feet and I was definitely moving good. Lake: warm,lots of weeds. I'm guessing the temp was closer to 79 than 74, but whatever.

I suspect this is one of my better T1s and it was kind of a long distance between transition and in and out.

My computer was working and I kicked my ass to average 20 mph. By comparison with other participants, the course was 25+ change.

Nothing I worked hard, great mental and physical effort.

Got elastic sports laces. Good move

I had planned to kick my own a** in this race and so I went out rather fast. Major cramping in both quads and my hams felt bad.

Time to start working on my running as I have on swim and bike. Now if I could just stop getting injured. Next day I can feel a strain in the inner thigh when I straighten my leg--thinking its quads, maybe the gracilis or semitendinosus. Icing now.

Walked around a bit. Ate a granola bar and some cookies, water, gatorade. Had a massage. They brought in students who needed to get their hours (read: free)and unfortunately I had one who was not terribly aggressive. SHould have stretched since I could feel the hamstring after I got home from the long drive. Hung out and watched the Half Iron come in and took pix of friends.


I was really happy with my performance. I really pushed it in swim and bike and if I hadn't been cramping I wouldn've done it in the run--still I did the best I could. So I'm happy with it. My AG place was really good. Gotta work on the run and do it in a way that minimizes injuries to do any better.


Not too well organized, maybe because there were so many participants. Crazy at check-in, not enough people to mark and to hand out packets. Tiny transition area which was confusing about where the bike and run out were and because everyone had so little space there was crap in the way. IMO, they accepted too many participants. 50 people per wave and 32 waves = 1600. Two massage therapists after the sprint.
Drafting occurred during the bike--a large group that was working together. No penalties assessed in the results. That is not good.
They must have ran out of flags and cones and at the finish people went running the wrong way because they had the path go over grass and it looked wrong since there was a nice clear path that wasn't blocked off that also looked like to went to the finish line. A bunch of us stood there to point people to the right direction until someone found a Midwest Sports person and asked them put a barrier to direct people properly.
Dangerous at points on the bike because there weren't enough officials to watch for cars and they came close--I almost got sideswiped by a truck who didn't want to wait to turn on to the road and was frustrated by there being so many bikers.
Food was quite limited--and pretty sparse for the HIM folks.
Add that to the incorrect distances and I won't do the sprint again. I had fun as usual but there are so many great, local short-distance duathlons and triathlon that are super-well organized and staffed such as Heart of the Lakes, Apple, even Graniteman that I can easily fill my season with good races. I'm racing against myself so it is important to have accurate distances. There are few HIMs in the state and this is the only one in the middle of the season, so I can see why people would race that. But I suspect that there will be others soon and that competition may help make this a better race.