St. Anthony's Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

This was a wetsuit legal swim, so I wore one. My strategy was to go very easy and I stuck to this perfectly. I settled into a comfortable rhythm and kept it during the whole swim. The first part of the swim was very calm and easy, found a few feet here and there to draft of and was truly enjoying myself. I did not understood the instructions about the buoys though, they told us to turn left at the noodles, and I thought we were supposed to go in between the 2 and turn. Once I was getting there, I hear a yell from a volunteer telling me to turn before, so I lost a little time there, nothing major though. After that turn, the water got choppier, but it was not too bad. My navigation was decent, I swam 1676 yds according to my Garmin, instead of the 1640, so not too bad. I exited the water feeling great, which was the main goal!

Nothing, it went pretty much as planned. Maybe in the future if I feel I can get away with it, I will push a little harder.

The transition was fine, the wetsuit got stuck at my ankles for a few seconds, but not too bad. The issue came at the mounting line, I got on the bike and was having trouble getting my left foot (first one I clip in) in the pedal. After a few seconds of trying, I got it done, and started pedaling, only to feel my chain turn loose :( I had to stop, get off, fix the chain, and get back on and clipped in, so I lost about an extra minute. By the way, this time, counted on the bike course instead of on T1.

Practice the flying mount, which I always tell myself I will do, but never actually get around to doing. It always seems better to go train rather than to practice transitions :)

The level of effort on the bike felt great. My goal was to go at a good pace but without pushing it. I wanted to save myself for the run. This being my first Olympic Tri, I knew that the run was going to be hard and I would need all the "help" I could get. The gear I rode for most of the race felt fine, but afterwards looking at the data, it looks like my cadence was a little low. The 82 average I had is affected by the high number of turns, which brought it down, but still, even without the turns I was riding in the high 80s instead of low 90s. Even though I was not going too hard, towards the end of the ride I started feeling my hamstrings a little bit and I slowed down in the last 5 miles.

Maybe ride one gear lower to be able to go at a higher cadence.

I got off the bike fine and ran run in my bike shows to rack the bike. I did that fine, removed my helmet fine and got my bike shows off. Then when I was getting my socks on, I got a huge cramp on my abdomen, two of the muscles tightened up a lot, and I had no choice but to stop and stretch them. Lost almost a minute doing this, but there was no way around it. then finished getting my running shoes on and took off.

Tell my abdomen to not mess with me :)

I started the run going at what I thought was a really easy pace. This was my strategy, to start easy and keep not "die" at the end. Imagine my surprise when after hearing the alarm for the 1st mile I looked down at my Garmin and saw a 8:37 first mile! Definitely not a pace I can hold for 10k. I kept going with the same level of effort and slowed down a bit, but after that kept it pretty constant for the next 4 miles or so. Towards the end, I started feeling that it was getting harder and harder to keep the pace. Mile 6 was the slowest one and felt like the one in which I was putting the most effort too. Overall, I was pretty happy with the run though. I imagined I was going to be at around 55 minutes, so considering the heat at this point in the race, I was fine with the 57 minutes. The neighbors in the area were great, cheering for us, having parties with music, and spraying us with cold water if we felt like it. The atmosphere truly helped with getting the mind off the pain. Though to be honest, during the first five miles, my effort level was such that it felt moderately easy, so there wasn't a lot of pain to be had.

I just need to focus more on my run. Especially now, that my next A race is a Half Rev3 in October, I really have to improve this leg of the race above anything else.

Grabbed a couple of bottles of water, walked around a bit, then had a bottle of Gatorade and went towards transition to see a couple of friends from work start their run. They were in one of the last waves (they are young guns) and started an hour before me. Also, we had a bet going. The one that is 14 years younger than me had to beat me by 10 minutes, and the one that is 11 years younger had to beat me by eight. If I won, they had to do the Half Rev3 in Sarasota in October. They were actually pretty close to one another when they started the run, and I checked and assuming they had started on time, I had a 10 minute lead on them at the start of the run (they did start late, so this was not accurate). They are both runners, so it wasn't out of the question that that could beat my run time by about 20 minutes.
I then walked into the food tent and grabbed a muffin, a cereal bar, a slice of pizza and some more water. Then walked all the way around transition and went to retrieve my stuff. Once I was out I walked towards the finish line to see who had won the bet. The minutes went by and I thought I had already won the bet and maybe there was a chance that I had beat them straight up. But that wasn't possible, was it? That's when I started thinking they may have started late. Anyway, long story short, they came in within one minute of one another, and one of them beat me by 6 minutes and the other one by 7. Therefore I won the bet and they will start training with me for the Half! :)


The only thing was the decision to enjoy the race and not to push myself to the point that it's more suffering than fun. The way I see it is that if I do this too early, I will probably end up with a worse time overall after blowing up, and pushing hard towards the end, will maybe gain me a minute or 2, but get me to the finish line feeling awful instead of elated, so I am happy with my choice.


This is an amazing race. The organization is absolutely amazing. Of course, having to take your bike there the previous day is a little bit of a pain, but with 3300 athletes, there is no choice. There was a huge amount of volunteers, all of them supportive and friendly. The crowds are great too, and the atmosphere overall rocks. The course is fun and safe. If I compare this for example with the HITS race I did in Naples, in that one, there were almost no instructions on the turns, which ended up with me going over the handlebars and DNFing. Here, there were clear signs and in dangerous areas lots of volunteers letting the athletes know what was ahead. Truly outstanding. There were also many options for food for recovery, and the finish line is a must see. I will be doing this race every year from now on, barring injury.