Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

I am a bit disappointed with my swim. Of course I have not been working in the pool enough, or hard enough when I am there.

Swim faster

T1 went straight to hell in a handbasket. It was all going well until I went to jump on the bike with my shoes attached to the pedals. (this happened after I crossed the timing mat.) I got the first pedal stroke in correctly, and the rubber band on th other side snapped correctly, but I missed the top of the shoe. This being an uphill start, my momentum was shot. I actually had to take the shoes off the pedals and put the on. that sucked big time.
In addition to that, my seatpost clamp slipped, and the saddle ended up pointing nose-down at a 45 degree angle for the entire bike ride.

Practice more on the whole shoes-on-bike-start thing.I have since put some locktite on the seatpost clamp to see if that will secure it better. I intend to see if Guru will warranty the seatpost. This is the third or forth time it has slipped like this.

If the saddle screw-up had not happened, I would probably have been at least 2-3 minutes faster. Still, I had a good bike, I passed a huge number of people.The new bike is hella fast, were it not for the pedal/saddle screw-ups, I would have prpbably broken 35 minutes.

Still spooked about the shoes on the bike thing, I just popped out and ran through TA with my shoes on. This probably cost me a good bit of time.Still, I got my shoes on without any problem, and had a pretty good T2

I had a great run. This was my best tri-5k ever. I passed a lot of people on this section, and only got passed by one person who was not on a relay team.I will have to hand it to the new bike. I did not have any worms in my legs at the run start. I actually felt pretty good. I guess there is something to the whole "ride steep" thing after all.

The parts of the race that Set-up Inc organized and supervised went quite well. As with most things that Virginia Amateur Sports (the co-sponsor) has a hand in, there were screw-ups, un-informed volunteers, and people showing up late for their posts. Set-up is a top-notch organization, and VAS is truly a b-grade outfit.