Black Diamond Triathlon - Long Course - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Definitely my worst swim of the year. My swim training has been almost non existent for the last three weeks and it showed for sure today. I felt fine out there and never felt like I was going to hard but I just was moving very slow in the water. To make things even worse the fog that had been sitting fairly high dropped down almost the exact same time that we started the swim. People on shore said that before you could see all the way across the lake but once we headed up we disappeared about 100 feet out. This fog made sighting very difficult. For the most part I just followed the heads in front of me.

I have 6 months until my next tri and in that time I want to get in a lot more swim time and a bunch more coaching. This is my first year swimming and it definitely shows in my form and the resulting poor swim times

A fairly good transition. I tried to just be smooth but not rush things because I knew this was a long long day and spiking my heart rate here was not going to help anything.

Work on staying smooth.

The bike was my strong point of the day. I felt really good until about mile 48 or so. And then I am not sure what happened but I was having some bad stomach issues. I started cramping and getting nauseated. I was also having some small back spasms. Between those two issues I was not able to stay in the aero position any longer. I was averaging 20.2 mph up until then and so I lost a considerable amount of time in those last few miles. I am not sure if I took in too much water or swallowed some air but it is something I need to get figured out for sure.

Figure out my nutrition a little better and find out what was causing my stomach issues. Stay on top of my training and get more long rides in. My lack of long rides was defiantly felt towards the end also.

Legs felt a little wobbly coming into transition. I had never run off of the bike after any ride longer then about 30 miles. The bikes who were racked next to me also thought that it would be ok to rack there bike into my spot and on the wrong side. That kind of thing pisses me off so bad. It would have only taken two more seconds to have racked them right instead I had to take time to move them over to be able to get my bike on.

Not much I could have done differently. Just have to work on staying smooth.

The run was rough for sure. I came off of the bike still having the bad stomach issues. I stopped at the first porta potty I came to and peed but that didnt help at all. The first two miles my stomach was just in a huge not. I was burping a lot and for a bit I contemplated making myself throw up thinking that might make me feel better but ended up deciding against it. By about mile two my stomach issues had cleared them selves up and my legs surprisingly felt good but I made one really made mistake. I decided to go with my new shoes that I had not done a lot of long runs in and I think the lacing that is in them is the main culprit but it was just killing my feet. I knew there was nothing that I could do but just keep pushing forward. My legs and my lungs felt like they could keep pushing harder but my feet were screaming no please stop the whole time. My lower back also started to spasms a little for about the last mile I believe that was related to the time spent on the bike in Aero position. I ended up running about half of the course with a nice guy who I met on course and we talked a little which helped take my mind off of things and kept me moving forward. I did a run walk routine on the run and that helped a bit too. I walked the couple of hills that were on the course and I walked all of the aid stations as well.

Better shoe choice fore sure. I think I could very easily shave 15 minutes off of this time if I wouldn't have had my feet feeling the way they were.

Walked over to a bench and sat down and talked with y girlfriend. I took my shoes off and the second that I got my left shoe off my arch got the worst cramp in it. I had a not in my arch about the size of a gumball. It made it hard to even walk. Got some food and water in me packed up my gear and then we made the 3 hour drive home.


My goal for this race was to be under 6 hours and I did that so ultimately I am very happy with my race. I think under ideal situations I could have done a 5:30 but that didn't happen today. My training had been great all summer up until about 4 weeks ago. I missed a lot of my long rides and long bricks. This was a good training race for me and has me very excited about more races at this distance and about my IM next year. My weight defiantely played a factor as well. With my training slowing down over the last few weeks my weight crept back up a little bit as well.


I loved the course and would do it again for sure because of that fact but AA sports who puts on these races has some horrible volunteers and crappy post race food and festivities.