Tri the Parks - Richard B. Russell State Park - TriathlonOlympic

I thought this was a decent swim. I kept it fairly straight and swam easily. I expected a 19 minute swim as I came out of the water, so I was somewhat disappointed, but I was not stressed at all so I was ready to ride.

I am wondering if the Tri the Parks measuring tools aren't defective. I don't know how they measure swim distances, but they always seam to take longer than they should. I know they were off on the bike course, so I have reason to wonder.

My time is not the official time and I've only included time in the water.

I'm ok with this swim. I could do it a lot faster and I need to focus on form a little more in open water now that I have the navigation issues corrected.

This includes the walk to transition, which was maybe 100 yards, but steeply uphill.

I intentionally took it easy on the transitions on this race.

The official distance was 22 miles, but I measured it by car and bike and it was longer. I'm using my bike computer data.

In previous races, I have made the mistake of riding with groups of people that seemed to be going about the same speed and then failing to move on after they slowed down a bit. This time I found myself trading the lead with a young guy who looked like he could ride and and told myself that when he fell off the pace I would drop him. Every time I passed though, he would catch and pass me again. We eventually picked up a couple of other riders, a 69 yo man and a 34 yo woman on a P2C and if anyone fell off the pace a little someone else would kick it in. It was was a lot of fun riding that way and really helped me pace myself.

Top speed was 42.1 mph. That was fun.

I could have pushed it and maybe dropped a minute off my time, since I wasn't planning on saving anything for the run/limp, but I'm happy.

I took my feet out too soon, thinking I was closer than I was to the finish. I don't think I lost much time.

I wasn't rushing. If I could run I could cut it down.

I still walk up and run down, but even the downhills were hurting because the road was slanted more steeply than usual for runoff, I thought. I was having to the lift the injured left leg more than I wanted. I pushed it a little because I didn't want to finish DFL in my group (I missed that by about 90 minutes it turned out) and I saw Kelly coming out on the loop and was afraid she would catch me. Not that I would mind if she beat me, but she started 6 minutes later than I did and my ego can only stand so much abuse.

Considering how I ran/walked, this was actually a decent time and I don't think I did any additional damage to the hammy.

Stood around in the hot sun for 2 hours awaiting the awards ceremony (Kelly won in her group). They really need to speed up that process.


My apparently never-ending hamstring injury.


Finishers of this race included a 12 year old boy and an 85 year old man. I passed one guy on the bike course about halfway through and an hour later, while I was halfway through the run, I saw him limping in on a flat tire. What a ride that must have been. The best part of this race, though, was watching Kelly come through the finish full throttle to win her division.