Hueston Woods Triathlon - Olympic Course - TriathlonOlympic

Looking at the course it felt daunting, much longer than I had imagined it would look (especially since the buoy the furthest out was not in place when we first got to the site). I held back to be a little more at the back of the pack. My friend had done essentially no swim training for this race so we started at the very back. I ran until the water was just over my knees then I dove in the water. It was still pretty shallow to the first buoy so I stood up and dove forward again a few more times until it got deeper and everyone was swimming.

Starting out I didn't have the greatest form and my breathing was a little crazy but I just kept going and kept up with most of the people. I got hit a few times which I totally expected but it really wasn't too bad. After turning the first buoy I was able to pass several people and got out on my own for a while. At some point near the end of the first lap I had settled in to my stroke and all of sudden I ran into a pack of 3 guys swimming ahead of me. it kind of stopped me in my tracks. But I continued swimming and I kept passing people. Every so often all of a sudden I would run into someone and realize it was somebody passing me. Many times I would sort of stop a little bit and look around to see what it was. One thing that I knew I was doing throughout the course was zigzagging quite a bit, and the garmin didn't lie afterwards. Coming out of the water I was around 33 minutes on my watch so I was happy as my goal was just to finish in under 35 minutes.

Need to work on swimming form to swim more effeciently, sighting, swimming straight, and getting used to the bumping things that happen in an OWS.

As I was running up the beach into the transition I removed my cap and googles. I had placed my garmin forerunner 305 in a plastic bag under my cap so I took it out and removed it. I swam with the quick release wrist band on so I just put the garmin in place which worked out even better than I ever imagined. Transistion went very smoothly overall. I only have mountain bike shoes and they took a few seconds longer than I would have liked to get the tongues and straps just right but really not much problem at all. Since I only had one bottle for the bike I felt like i needed to take a quick drink out of a nalgene bottle I had at the transistion. Ran out and got on the bike. I haven't practice flying bike mounts so

Remember water bottles so I don't feel the need to drink in the transition or at least it's easier to grab a quick drink. Over all I don't think I would change much other than practice flying bike mounts to get on the bike a little faster. If I get new road/tri shoes practice with the shoes clipped in as well.

My bike split was a little disappointing. I had expected to go faster even though there were hills, none of them were nearly as severe as the ones at the end of my normal training ride. Overall bike is probably my weakest as I have least amount of time in the saddle (especially this year). Looking at my overall time I got discourage as I neared the end as I thought that I had rode my self out of my goal of sub 3 hours. Not sure if I had my other hydration with GU Brew would have helped or not this this. I had two gels taped to the top tube of my bike. THis worked out really well and I used one a couple miles into the bike and the second around 4-5 miles out from the bike finish.

I would remember my hydration that i had been using in training. Not sure if I was missing out on hydration or not but it could have hindered my performance.

Otherwise, get more trainer time this winter to improve bike fitness. Get more time in the saddle to improve as well.

I really need to improve the engine.

Coming into T2 you come down a short steep hill so I was cruising about 30mph and the T2 was coming up fast. I removed my left foot from the shoe but it was numb so I had trouble feeling whether it was on top of my shoe or it wasn't. I was coming in very quickly and still had one shoe on so I tried to pull up on the right foot to start taking it out and I knocked my left shoe into the ground and it about knocked me off. But I settled got my right foot out at the last moment and hard on the brakes I realized I wouldn't get slowed down very much at the dismount line so I did a sort of flying dismount at the line going much faster than I ever imagined. With numb feet I stumbled and nearly fell face first onto the time mats going into the transition area. I caught myself and was able to run to the rack and rack my bike. I forgot to hit the lap button on my garmin until late so my garmin time is off for T2. Had a good quick change into running shoes and visor on. Took an extra few seconds to get garmin off bike and back on to wrist and take an extra drink of water from the nalgene.

I obviously need to practice dismounts and getting my feet out and ontop of the shoes. Over all I didn't really lose any time but I got lucky and it could have been a disaster. Need to move the garmin to my wrist earlier before the transition so I don't have to worry about it.

I tried to really keep hydrated. I drank at every waterstop. Sometimes just water and sometimes gatorade. Not a big fan of gatorade. After making my last turn I felt like I had drank too much water but it didn't hurt me too much. About a half mile out on the course I realized I had some pebbles in my shoe that I didn't feel at first from the numb feet off the bike. I thought about stopping and getting them out but they really weren't too distracting so left them in. I was mainting about a 9:45 pace which I thought was very good for the end of triathlon and things were going well. About 2.5 miles into the run I finally passed my buddy he was about 2 miles behind me. I would pass him 2 more times and he looked like he was stuggling a bit but it kind of put a pep in my step. At the end of the first lap a girl that had walked up the first hill out of transition on the bike passed me. I followed her the rest of the way. After the turn around I made it my goal to pass her before the finish line. With about 3/4 of a mile I finally made the pass back and finished about a minute ahead of her. It was good mental thing to have someone to pass even though the womens wave started 2 minutes after mine it kind of pushed me. I picked up my pace in the last .3 of a mile but didn't really push it too hard as I was kind of hurting. As I entered the finishing chute I realized that I was right at the 3 hour mark I pushed it but I knew I was really just over the 3:00 mark.

My watch said 3:00:44. At this point I was kicking myself for not pushing just a little harder on the run. After the bike I had pretty much punted on the idea of finishing in under 3 hours. I never really looked at my watch for an overall time to gauge that on the run. I wish I would have because just a little extra push over the course and I could have done it.

Walked around and waited for my buddy with his fiance who had come to watch the race. He finished in around 3:25 which was good considering he didn't do too much training for the race.


Swim - Need to improve swim form and efficiency. Also more practice in OWS with other people bumping into me will help with the slow down.
Bike - Need to improve engine on my bike. If I want to perform well in future triathlons or complete an Ironman I need to work hard on this portion.
Run - Nothing really Just need to keep logging miles. I have really improved my running over the past two years and just need to keep progressing.


The swim is wierd due to the shallow swimming area but otherwise it was fine. The bike course had a few poor roads but overall it was a fairly enjoyable course and i liked it.
On the run they changed it this year to make it flatter as there was a sort of hill on the way out on the previous out and back. I did not like the maze and all the cutbacks and back and forths on the course they had. Otherwise it was flat and not too bad.

Overall I was very happy with this race, first off I finished and I was slightly disappointed that I didn't finish in under 3 hours but that was sort of my dream goal for this race. Anything under 3:15 and I would have been happy. For the future just need to work on improving my fitness and efficiency in all three disciplines but it was a very good start.