South Maui Triathlon at Wailea - TriathlonOlympic

Men's wave went off 5 minutes prior. I positioned myself to the far right and near the front of the pack. Did well getting out at a fairly quick pace and avoided any wrestling. Had a LOT of people touching my feet. My swimming is getting better because I managed to stay in a pack of swimmers nearly the entire swim (I'm usually bringing up the front of the rear).

Swim was against a slight current to the first buoy. Sighted well until about the last 50 ft, then drifted to the left a bit and had to push to get back out and around the buoy and not get caught inside.

It's a longer stretch to the second buoy in this race. This is where my sighting kept going a little haywire. The current kept pushing me toward shore as we swam parallel to it and I had to keep working my way back out to not get pushed in too far. Still stayed with a pack, which boosted my confidence because I get a little panicky when I feel like I'm out there by myself.

Swim was fairly straight and focused after rounding the second buoy and heading for shore. There was a little cloud cover so the sun didn't hit me directly in the eyes as I headed for shore, which helped.

My goal was to come in under 30 minutes - I need to push a little harder and navigate a little better to shorten the length of my swim. I need to develop more strength in my upper body to make this happen. Last year was 34:18, so happy to at least take off two more minutes.

Shaved moe than two minutes off my T1 time from last year, and 2nd fastest transition in my AG.

Bought new Shimano triathlon-specific bike shoes a few weeks ago, and left them clipped to the bike. Followed my transition plan well and got to the mount line and on my bike without any trouble, but needed to pedal up a hill to get out onto the course, so waited until I got on the course to slip feet into shoes.

Even though I practiced slipping them on and off on the bike, the race, my heart rate and pure adrenalin conspired against me and I could not get my feet into my shoes. I had to stop at the curb and slip them on. Then I was OK.

Get tri clips or use some other system to keep shoes on top so I can slip my feet in a lot easier. Practice more, and settle down and slow down a little bit on race day to stay focused.

Tough bike ride. Although I made it out of transition quickly, I had a lot of trouble getting into my shoes. Too much excitement, high heart rate, could not settle down and floundered. Had to stop by the side of the road, yank my shoe off the right pedal (I got the left one in), slip my foot in, then re-clip in and go.

Finally got going, stayed aero and took advantage of the downhills as much as possible to get back up the hills. Rounded the corner to the first steep climb with good momentum. Was in the middle ring and needed to downshift, but I was too low in the rear and threw my chain. Came to a dead stop and could not get going on the steep incline. Hurried up the rest of the hill as fast as I could to a parking lot and got re-started. Felt like a 10-yr old learning how to ride a bike. Total rookie mistake. Pressed on.

Got up another steep climb without issue. Made to the first semi-flat section as we approached T2 (we would come back to it) and really started to pick up some speed. As I approached the entrance to T2, a volunteer waved a race maintenance vehicle out onto the road in front of me. It would have been OK except the area to the right where I needed to go was completely covered in broken glass (WTF was this glass pile doing RIGHT OUTSIDE OF T2!?!). It was either ride through the glass and risk two flat tires, or slam into the back of the truck. I had nowhere to go, swerved to avoid the glass and locked up the brakes. My rear tire skidded to the side, but I miraculously stayed upright. I kept on going and worked to get my heart rate back down.

The next 19 miles were fairly uneventful until I rolled over a giant palm frond about the size of a 2x4 on the side of the road (I saw it and as I looked at it I drifted and hit it - total do'h moment!). My second near-crash. Made the turn around and headed for home.

Was fine until the second to the last hill - shifting error AGAIN and threw my chain. Had to get off and re-start. I just never really regained my concentration after the first near-miss with the truck.

I thought my bike fitness was pretty good going in and I wanted to finish in under 1:30 - could not maintain the speed I needed and too many errors happened.

I need to ride more hills, work on shifting and practice, practice, practice transition with shoes on the bike. I was very proud of my T1 time, but I paid for it.

I was so freaked out about not getting INTO my shoes, that I just unclipped and ran in shoes in T2. It was a separate T2 and the volunteers were GREAT with helping get the bike racked. Shoes and helmet came off easily and even though I ran the wrong direction and had to turn around to get to the exit, I connected with the volunteer who had my run bag and got out of there in a hurry. I had the 4th fastest T2 in my AG.

Know where the exit was - I did not have a chance to check it out prior to race day.

I did a lot of bike/run bricks and felt really good running off the bike in training, so I was really surprised to have legs that felt like stumps for quite awhile right out of transition. It took a long time to get them moving. I'd wanted to run about 57-58 minutes, but just could not get a rhythm going.

At the turn around I started to get really hungry and felt under fueled. I wasn't able to get the gel to come out of my gel flask, so I didn't get all my planned nutrition in.

Do more hill training, especially off the bike.

Work out the gel issues. Should have stuck with the packets!!!

Really nice post-race dip in the ocean. My husband brought my "after race" bag, so I had a clean outfit to change into which was AWESOME.


I need to work on more HTFU, especially since I didn't actually crash, to overcome the mental block that really threw me off on the bike. More hill training - this is a tough course and I can't lose sight of that. More strength training, especially for swimming.


This race gets better and better every year. I like the changes they made to the transition areas and the volunteers were great. My only complaint was the pile of glass outside of T2 that almost caused me to crash. They should have swept that up or coned it off and been more mindful of the danger there.

The weather and conditions were ideal for race day. Calm water, relatively cool temps and a few clouds.