Desert Sprint Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Kind of an odd swim, but fun anyway. My time was fine but the field seemed hyped-up, and there was more contact than average for the first half.

Watching earlier waves, I planned to run right, dive in, and swim wide out of the narrow chute, but it was obvious a bunch of guys had the same idea. I did run far enough right to dive in without running into someone, but there was a pack, and people were on my outside most of the way. I had people swimming on my legs quite a bit.

Because of the pack and frequent contact, I didn't have to sight every 10 or 20 stokes like normal, but stayed in the group. When I did sight, we were pointed well enough.

When we hooked back at the third buoy, a lot of people cut to shore and were piled up getting out, so I veered left and swam toward the balloons. As I'd breathe, I could see that staying in the water was at least as fast as what the other people were doing.

There was carpet on the path to transition this year. Nice!

9th in AG. The suit came off okay. I'd lubed up the ankles with Body Glide and Suit Juice.

As usual, I ran through the people mounting their bikes and did a flying mount. The immediate climb up the hill was fine, and I was ready to hammer out of the park.

I pushed hard on the first half, and made sure to keep the speed up out of and back into the park.

I was a little slower than other years when I was cycling more than once a week, but felt like it was a good ride. I hammered to avoid the surges and packs of previous years, and only got passed by a couple of young guys. There was one crash just in front of me that people had just arrived at, so I passed the word to the next volunteers in case they could call or radio for help. The rider had probably tumbled over a cone, and had hit the pavement with his helmet. Since I have too much experience with this sort of thing, my fingers are crossed that he's okay.

Not a bad ride, but it was a perfect measure of training vs. speed.

I'd clearly be faster if I were riding two or thee times a week.

10th in AG. No prob.

I pushed hard, and am happy with my speed despite my minimal training.

Just a quick round of snacks, and bumped into my friend Gil, who took 2nd in the AG.


Always a fun race, and the weather was like from a travel ad.

Here are the AG results:
http://raceresults.eternaltiming.com/index.cfm/20130302_Desert_Tria...

http://bit.ly/13whzeq