Onion Man Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

They had shortened the course because of the cold. At first I was like, "whatever, I trained for 1500M I'm swimming the whole thing". That thought immediately went away when we jumped in. I hadn't ever swam in my wetsuit or in open water like that before and after about 100 M I had a little freak out and had to do the breast stroke/backstroke for a minute or two to figure out that I wasn't going to drown out there. Then I got it together and finished it out with freestyle. Not ideal though. I felt like I finally got a good stroke rhythm with about 50M left in the swim, so at least I finished with style.

I'd practice in open water I guess, but honestly, it's just been too cold here in CDA to get in any of our lakes, so... what can you do.

I must have done something wrong in the swim because when I stopped to pull off the wetsuit in my transition area I was so dizzy I almost fell over. So instead of risking the horrible embarrassment of falling over and knocking down all those fancy bikes, I just sat down on my bag and finished changing gear while sitting. Did this slow me down, probably, but we're not breaking any records here so who cares.

something, not sure what.

I was surprised by how long this took, I thought I was doing a lot better. There was some wind, but I didn't think it slowed me down all that much. I definitely faded during the last couple miles around the community college and on the resevoir road.

I think I'd have a gel or something about half way through. And I'd bike harder.

This went fine.

First two miles were hard, I hadn't ever practiced running after getting off the bike and, surprise surprise, my legs felt weird. I think my pace at this point was probably 10-11 minute miles. I knew that the legs would get better so I kept on going and they did. I used the secret trick of being glad I could be doing this thing and I was able to speed up a little. I got passed by a ton of people, mostly spandex-clad legit racers, so I didn't feel too bad about that. About a half mile in the leader passed me going the other way. Then as I came back in to the parking lot on the final stretch he was there cheering people on, I thought that was a class act move.

Do the brick workouts that everyone said I should. Sneak in an ipod.

Kneel down, my 6 year old son climbed on me, got a big hug and I had some orange slices. The orange slices were awesome.


Cool BBQ afterwards, not enough people cheering though, we did our best to make up for it since we were waiting for the rest of our group to finish. I think they should have shuttles bring people in and clear up space for a beer tent of some kind. Great race though, we had a really good time.