The Rookie Triathlon - TriathlonMini Sprint

Decent swim. Wore my wetsuit because they reported the water temp was about 68. Didn't feel that cold at all. Felt more like upper 70s. Suit slowed me down a bit in transition because of the crappy timing chip they used. The thing is freaking huge. See my complaints about it from last year's Austin Tri. Supposedly this is the last time they're using those.

Haven't done any short distance swim work lately.

Suit got stuck on the lousy freaking timing chip. As usual at Decker, I was slower in T1 because of the long uphill run from the water and my desire to keep my heart rate down a little bit prior to jumping on the bike. Still, 6th in the AG for T1. Not too bad considering the 5 second or so delay of getting the suit off my heels.

Overall rank is a bit of a guess since some of the timing mats were screwed up in the early part of the race. As a result, a lot of the people ahead of me didn't have splits recorded until they exited T2.

At any rate, I was a bit disappointed in the power level. I've been holding better power than that in my 2x20' intervals I've been doing every week. I should have pushed harder. My average power was over 220 for the first 5 minutes, but I backed off way too much over the next 10.

Hurt more.

Not much room for improvement here. Fastest T2 in the AG by 4 seconds. If anyone reads this, never underestimate transitions. I finished 6th in the AG. If the guys behind me had matched my transition times, I would have finished 8th. More importantly, if the guy that finished 7th was as fast in T1 and T2 as I was, he would have finished 3rd and placed in the AG.

16th fastest overall.

What a bummer. With hindsight, I realize I was in 3rd place coming off the bike, but I had no idea of where I was at the time. I had a guy come by me at about the 1 mile mark. Managed to hold on to him about 50 yards behind and felt I might be able to reel him in over the last 1/3 mile or so, since he seemed to slow a bit on the uphills and that last 1/3 is just that. With about 1/2 mile left, I had another guy come by. I picked up my pace to hold him (and hopefully catch the guy in front of him), but the guy up ahead had picked up his pace at about the same time and I gradually lost a little bit to both of them. The second guy ran a 6:19 pace, so no surprise I couldn't hold on to him. To add insult to injury, a third guy in my AG came by with about 1/4 mile to go. No way I was going to stay with him, either. He ran 5:57 miles.

Not much. I may have been able to push a little harder on the run. I wasn't quite ready to puke when I crossed the finish line.

Had a bit of water and a beer from the beer garden. Sure it was 9 in the morning, but it was New Belgium.



This race was broken down into 3 populations: open, veterans, and rookies. I finished 13th among all the veterans, yet 6th in M40-44. That's really surprising. Have yet to see how many of the 5 guys ahead of me are also part of the Texas Tri Series. I hope it's not many of them. Last year, I didn't do well in the early races and knew I could catch the guys ahead of me as we got to the longer distances. This year, I don't see that being the case.

All that can wait, though. IMTX is less than 5 weeks away!


High Five Events are always laid back, fun, and well run. Looking forward to the rest of the events in the Texas Tri Series this year, including High Five's first attempt at a HIM.