IronGear Sports Rio Salado Triathlon - Olympic Course - TriathlonOlympic

Good swim for me. I was in wave 7, started up front and it didnt seem long before we caught the wave in front. Sighting was tricky going east into the sun, I was looking forward to the swim back west but my goggles fogged up as soon as I turned. Still, did OK, kept a comfortable pace. Was right at 28 mins when I exited the water.

Nice to have the wetsuit strippers, once I had my suit off, I jogged to transition.

2 loop course, not as congested as I thought it would be. Decent ride for me. I was hoping that if I held back a bit on the bike, I'd have fresher legs on the run. Maybe held back too much, I think I could have easily taken 1 minute per lap off. Had fun catching up to my friend who was in the previous wave, then he did a good job of keeping me in sight after that. It was also nice to hear my friends cheering us on the hot corner!

2 loops around Tempe lake. It was starting to get hot. I ran the first 2 miles very comfortably, then just tried to hold the sub-7 pace. I was hoping to negative split the run but I think I was a little bit slower the 2nd lap. There were a lot more people on the course on lap 2. Looked at my watch as I came over the bridge towards the finish and saw 2:19:xx so I tried to sprint it in and go under 2:20, just missed it.

Hung out with friends, got my bike etc and waited for results then awards. The girl that came in 1st is a pro, they took the pros out and gave them their own awards, so I got 1st place amateur. It was a nice comeback race in Tempe. My good friend was racing her first tri in 2 years and took 2nd in her AG, it was a fun day! I headed over to a track meet in Mesa to see my son race, not the bet way to recover post-race- 6 hours out in the heat but he got an 800m PR and his 4x400m relay team took 2nd. I was pretty tired and dehydrated by the end of the day!


I'm still learnign how to race this distance. I think the bike is my strength just now and it's a fine line between pushing hard enough on the bike to take advantage of that strength, versus going too hard and having dead legs for the run. I don't think that the OLY distance is my best, due to the comparative length of the swim, but time wise, it's the easiset for me to tarin for just now.


Redrock are a great race company. Their volunteers are awesome and their T shirts and Visors rock! I got a really nice vase as an award! So glad they were able to put on a triathlon after all the bad luck they had with the lake.