Tupper Lake Tinman Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I started off near the rear and took off with the pack. To my amazement when I looked around in 5 minutes I was in the middle of the pack. That can only mean 1 thing. I started way too fast. By 10 minutes I was getting winded and actually did the back stroke for 15 seconds to catch my breath. 15 minutes in I did something Ive never done before... I started looking for a canoe or surf board with a life guard. I didn't exactly need one but I felt that I needed to know where one is just in case. I'm sure they were there but I couldn't find one so I convinced myself that the only way to get out of this was to swim at my regular pace. It's driving me mad that I can't have a normal swim start. 30 minutes in I'm usually anxious to get out of the water and onto the bike but I got so relaxed that I didn't want the swim to end. But it did, 41 minutes, thats under 2:00 min/100. A first!!

T1 went pretty well. Got out of my wetsuit relatively quickly and got into my bike shoes sock-less. It was raining when I set up transition so everything was still in the bag, but that didn't slow me down too much. Got out of T1 in 3 minutes and didn't have to run back for my glasses this time.

The 56 mile bike was relatively uneventful except for the fact that I rode faster than ever. Averaged just under 18 MPH and actually reverse split it. Oh yeah, it rained for most of it. Didn't bother me at all except for the trucks passing at 50 MPH and getting caught in the water coming off them.

With 3 miles left on the bike and while i was pushing the hardest to make my avg mph reading tick up a notch from 17.9 the sun decided to come out full force.

I was a bit dizzy getting off the bike and couldn't remember where my spot was in transition. I finally found it. Because nothing was laid out T2 took me longer than it should. Forgot to untie my sneakers before packing them. Small stuff like that. My support crew had a field day with me 'how's the mani-padi going Steve?' and 'how did you get a cappuccino machine into transition Steve'. I didn't care because I wasn't supposed to be racing today, "this is just a training brick" is how my coach sold this to me. Did I mention I rode 40 miles of the Placid bike course yesterday at a pretty fast clip?

I knew there would be some elevation gain but didn't expect the first 2 miles to be uphill. Ouch! While the sun is still out in full force. Right at that point, the sun goes away, breeze shows up and an aid station with a smorgasbord of water, powerade, bananas, oranges and gels appears. Yay. The rest of the run was fine and I maintained pretty much the same marathon pace from beginning to end finishing in just a touch over 2 hours. Very pleased.

Great event, hope to do it again next year.