Stoneman Sprint Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

I haven't swam a lot lately so I was fine with my performance. The water was really warm, fairly smooth and the sun was to the side. I am not the best sighter so it was to my advantage to only have to navigate to the buoy then back to the dock. I don't like a crowd so I took a fairly far outside line to the turnaround. I managed to do mostly freestyle with breaststroke for extended navigating - especially when I started to get in a crowd or my heart rate was climbing.

Put more time in the pool to get my pace back up

Had a great T1. My husband gave me grief for my slow transition at MiM so I consciously tried to pick it up here. I ad th second fastest T1 in my age group so I was pleased with that.

Eventually train to leave my shoes on the bike and get in the after I start the bike course

I intentionally pushed myself knowing this was a course well suited to it. I was passed quite a bit on the way out but less so after the turnaround. The Olympic used the same course but went out farther. The turnarond in the middle of road was nervewracking because there were Oly athletes still behind who were going on through and I didn't want to turn in front of them. The course was not closed to traffic and that caused some scary moments on the way out. More than one occasion, there were racers coming and going on the same section of New City Rd with cars flying through them pretty fast. Due to th gravel and rough shoulders, you could only safely pull over so far to the right when cars came through. It was very sporadic traffic, just a problem when they did come through. More than once I had to wait for cars so that I could safely make a pass.

For me, this was a good ride. I'm pleased. I know I can continue to mprove.

Decent T2 especially considering I "run" with my bike shoes and speed play cleats. I had to put on socks & shoes so did well time wise

Eventually learn to ride with feet on top of the pedals

Yeah, the run kills me every time. I haven't been running due to the super high temps here and it really showed. I had to walk the first two minutes because I had a stitch coming out of transition. I then switched to a 3 min run: 1 min walk for the rest of the race. I knew I was slow but I didn't stress about it. My fastest mile was my third one so obviously I didn't push too hard. I was quite a bit faster my last sprint but lack of training shows.

Followmy running plan

Found my parents & son, grabbed some post-race food and then went to wait for my husband to finish the Olympic.


Sporadic training


This was a well organized event and on time. No real complaints about the course, cars can't be helped on an open road but luckily it was rural so not busy at all. Plenty of food for me at the finish, but almost everything was gone when my husband finished his Olympic (ie no cookies, bananas or chocolate milk, no turkey subs and only a few ham sandwiches but he doesn't eat pork). I see this a lot when there are dual events and more participants in the shorter event, just sucks a bit for the back of the packers. I did like the snow cones & though I was in no danger of winning an award, they were very cool for both the sprint and the Oly. The custom tech shirts were nice and I like the beer glass - i don't really expect anything but a shirt at these distances. This was a travel race for us but we chose it based on availability of two distances and proximity to my family (I.e. free babysitting!) if it works in our schedule, we will likely do this, especially since its hard to find such flat courses in Arkansas :)