Sylvan Beach Triathlon - TriathlonShort Course

Beach start w/the over-40 guys. Lots of contact early, but not horrible. I went off-course by a good 5-10 yards about halfway out to the 1st turn, then started sighting more often, slowing me down. It felt like a good swim, but it was slower than I expected. Caught 1 or 2 from the prior wave, and didn't get passed by the faster women until the backstretch. This is an improvement for me.

Swim more. Maybe push harder on the swim. I am still new enough (and this is a new distance for me) that I worry about blowing up.

I wear mtb shoes so I run in my shoes. Smooth mount, quick clip-in, and off we go.

Not much. Transitions are not my weak point, by a longshot. There may be 30-40 seconds of improvement to make here, nothing like what I lack on the actual events.

This felt like a good bike. I wanted to push harder, but as always I was saving up for the run. Passed several people; very few passed me. Of course, when you bring up the rear of your swim wave, that can happen easily. The rankings show I am just not riding as fast as the majority of the field. This was a surprise for me (more on that later).

Train harder. Bring more liquid. I just filled an Aerolite w/Gatorade. Should have had a bottle of water too.

Flying dismount and running in the mtb shoes. This just works for me. I even took a few seconds to drink water in transition before starting my run.

Nothing, really. 10th out of 29. Much else to work on before I work on this.

You hear that giant sucking sound? That's me on the run. This was almost as slow as my stand-alone half-marathon pace. I tried to have a little fun, cheered for some people I knew and some I didn't know. Ended up running close to 2 other guys not in my age group for the last 2 miles. We talked some friendly smack that made it a nice finish, but I knew this was a slow run.

Run more. Averaged less than 10mpw in the 6 weeks before taper. Just not enough miles.

Walked around, got my BYOB and some pizza, waited for my wife to finish her du. Talked w/some other racers.


Lack of training, duh. I could do each distance competently, and had done them back-to-back-to-back in training, but it was not enough to get into the middle of the pack. To do that in longer races, I will have to work much, much harder. BUT, there's a caveat: I did beat my goal time (2:20). I almost hit my "secret" goal (2:15). My swim and bike pace were not far off my sprint pace. My overall time would have been EXACTLY MOP in last year's field. This year my AG doubled over last year, and over half of the "new" finishers beat last year's 1st place finisher. The fast end of the field just got incredibly deep. So, while I am disappointed that I was so far back (part of why it took me 4 weeks to write this report), I have to temper that w/the fact that I met my time goal in a new distance. Even better: I learned that to survive an Olympic in August, I will need to work very hard for the next 2 months.


Jana (Tri-On-The-Run) is a great Race Director. Her races are well-organized, friendly, and fun. I would like beer at the finish, but that's not for everyone, so I BYOB and I'm happy. She does give us ice cream, after all!