Tri-Shark Classic Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Swam reeeeeeally wide. Argh. I kept trying to swim back to the main pack but it took me the entire first leg to make it to that corner buoy. I have no idea what I am doing to swim so wide - if it's an unconscious thing where I'm swimming away from the other people, or if I'm crossing over with my left arm and just veering right all the time, or what. I really need to get a coach or someone to watch me swimming in open water and give me some feedback. I don't seem to have this same veering problem in Lake Michigan, but then, the zebra mussels have made sure Lake Michigan is darn near as clear as a pool, so it's a totally different visual experience to be in a small murky lake. I was sighting the whole time, and constantly aiming toward the pack, so I just can't explain why it was so hard for me to angle to get back there.

And, all my early season open water swimming is paying off nicely, because I was totally happy with the water temperature. I understand that this puts me in the minority. :-)

I missed my swim goal by almost a full minute, probably because of swimming so wide; I must have added at least 50 yds to my total distance. Big bummer, because the swim was super short.

Straight run up a carpet from the lake to transition, and they must have swept the parking lot for gravel because it was nice and clean. A volunteer grabbed me and unzipped my wetsuit for me as I went up the ramp, without warning and without me particularly wanting to have someone unzip my wetsuit for me, which was odd (kind of a random surprise) but didn't slow me down, I don't think.

Struggled to get my socks over wet feet. Maybe I'll try sockless tomorrow...

I'd come down to ride the course a few weeks earlier, which paid off since I knew exactly where the turns were and what to expect -- and especially that there was a big downhill on the third leg of the rectangle to look forward to zooming down. Almost hit 30 mph! Unfortunately, after the thrill of that downhill, you went up a hill, turned a corner, and straight into the ugly west headwind. Everyone sort of struggled up that bit of road until we headed north to go back up and around the lake.

I tried to stay aero as much as possible, and I did, so I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

I'm very lucky it was dry and they'd swept the course for gravel, because I took a couple corners pretty fast. One of them, partway into the turn I thought, "oh, this could end badly." Should have been a little more cautious.

Transitioned pretty well, except my foot didn't want to slide into one of my running shoes. Had the elastic laces too tight, I guess. Still, a good transition.

The only real thing I screwed up with my transition was when I picked my rack. I should have changed to a rack closer to bike in/out. Instead, when I got there, I went with the first available rack I saw for my wave, which happened to be the very farthest rack of all from bike/out. First race of the year, and I didn't even think about that at all, I just saw open space near the end of the rack and thought "oh goodie." Of course that meant that I was running with the bike in goofy bike shoes for like half an hour to get through the transition area. It wasn't so bad for run out, because run out was in the middle of transition rather than the end, but bike out/bike in at the north end felt very far away from my spot.

I surprised myself with the run. I felt like I was just plodding along at some exaggeratedly slow pace, but I hit the button at mile 1 and looked down and saw the first number was 11, and was pretty pleased. Managed to keep my pace pretty even, cheered on a bunch of the other runners, and sprinted in the finish.

Nothing

Mainly walked around a bunch. Wandered in to transition to pack up my stuff, remembered I'd hauled my backpack back to the car when I was freezing, walked out there to get it (and of course I parked in Wisconsin), walked back, packed up my stuff, walked it out to the car, racked up the bike, and returned back to the post-race festivities for precious, precious bananas and the award ceremony, because I got 3rd in my division, which earned me my awesome shark-shaped trophy!


Bad steering on the swim, but otherwise, I think I performed at the capacity I was comfortable with, given that I wanted to podium but I also had an Olympic distance race the next day so I couldn't exhaust myself...not to mention I had to jump in the car and drive three hours immediately after the race.


I really feel like my mental focus was great at this race. I was constantly evaluating and keeping my focus on my goal times (I reeeeally wanted the shark trophy, haha). I had to dial it back on the bike a few times to save up energy -- riding the course ahead of time paid off.

I had a lot of fun at this race. It was well-produced and supported. None of my teammates were there for it, but a lot of other tri clubs were well-represented, and a lot of people stuck around to cheer the later finishers. It was a good first race of the season.