Square Lake Triathlon - Long Course - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Started out fast, as I usually do, to try to avoid getting caught in the wash (I was in the lead! Hooray!!) The lake was pristine, calm, and perfectly clear. However, I think that initial burst really burned me out, as I felt rather exhausted after the first few hundred yards, especially in the shoulders. I also felt that I couldn't catch my breath as well as usual. Perhaps I didn't get the wetsuit pulled up well enough, or wasn't quite in the shape I need to be to fit into it properly. At any rate, the swim felt really long, and by the half-way point of the second lap, I was ready to be done. On the finishing leg, I finally found someone to draft, and followed him in for the rest of the way.

Not sure if it was a wetsuit issue, fitness issue, or adrenaline issue that made me feel wiped after such a short distance. Certainly my lack of swimming over the summer has hurt, but I didn't expect it to be quite this bad.

It's a long run from the water to transition, up a long flight of stairs. I took a lot of time setting up my phone/cyclemeter so that my wife could follow along on facebook. My friend John was 30s ahead of me in transition, so I was hoping I would see him out on the bike.

In the future I'm going to race to race, not to make sure my family has a good time. While having the pacing info was helpful later in the race, I need to just go with feel and HRM and go.

My primary goal here was to finish comfortably and go too fast on the bike so I could have a good run. At Liberty, the heat obviously played a role, but I definitely got into racing too much, instead of going at my own pace, and commonly ran my HR too high. I never caught up to John again (in fact, didn't see him until near the turn-around on the run), meaning that he was moving a fair amount faster than me. Overall, I did everything right on the bike. Good pace, stuck perfectly to my nutrition plan, and I felt great coming off the bike.

Nothing really. A little more fitness would always help and I was dissappointed at my relative placement, but I executed this perfectly.

I was surprised to find my wife running through transition during the race (don't they keep spectators out of here?). Then I remembered that this was a Randy race and let it go. My wife wasn't going to steal anyone's stuff... Again spent time switching the phone over for the run, and also stopped to go pee, which probably added nearly a minute.

Nothing really. Efficiency here was pretty good, just had to deal with the bathroom break.

Overall this felt great! The first couple of large hills out of transition were painful, but once I got beyond that, I settled in at comfortable pace and ran. I tried to focus on good form and fore foot striking to avoid the IT band issues of the past. I saw John and Pete prior to reaching the turn-around, and then Carl on the way back. Coming into the finish was great! My wife and kids were waiting, and all of the kids came running down the chute with me.

Not much. The run started hurting a lot toward the end. The rollers were putting my quads on the verge of cramping. I think the run was executed about as well as it could be.

Stretched a little, jumped in the lake to cool down, then pieced together transition.


Overall fitness and a marginal swim were my only limiters. A better swim might have saved me only 1-2 minutes though. Overall I was very happy with the performance


I don't recall seeing a course marshall at the turn onto 95 on my second lap. Given the amount of traffic on 95, that would be an important detail. Otherwise everything went fairly well. While I don't know if I'll continue to do HIMs, if I do this will definitely be on the list.