Deuces Wild Olympic Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

Bad, really bad. First off, this event is at ~6500' and I had heard that you will really feel the elevation, and lack of oxygen, on the swim. For this reason alone I really wish I would have had the opportunity to jump in the water early and do some warm up but that fault lies purely on my shoulders. When the gun went off I moved in to the water around the back of the pack and began swimming. Roughly 75 meters out and I was gassed, gasping for air and having to pull up. I'd calm my breathing, stick my head back in the water and five pulls later it's the same situation. I literally swam to the first turn buoy with breaststroke/side stroke because I could not calm down and get my breathing squared away.

After rounding the first turn buoy I was able to stick my face in the water and finally get moving. I just concentrated on my stroke and completely shifted my focus away from the breathing. Took it as a time to work on some things and turned it into a bit of an open water training session. My last time out I had a horrible pull to the left and read on here that crossing over could be the cause. I do not have a cross over in the pool but sure enough, I noticed a big crossover with my left arm during my swim, maybe it's the wetsuit? I focused on correcting that and wow, instantly my line became a lot more direct! At least some good came out of this ridiculously horrible swim. The last half of the swim actually felt really good, so much that I wish we had swim splits because it was a night and day difference.

I also have to add that my gf was racing this same Oly as well. Upon coming out of the water a friend informed me that she was a couple minutes in front of me (yeah, her wave started after mine...I'm that bad) and to "go get her".

Warm up and I need to spend more time on OWS and swim! Immediately emailed my old swim coach to get lessons started again and formulated a plan with my gf for us to both start getting in some OWS on our days off.

This event had wet suit strippers which was pretty nice. Came out of the water, removed my cap and goggles, unzipped my suit and pulled it down to my waist. At that point hit the strippers and it was off instantly. Made it to my rack, shoes on, helmet on, no issues and I was out.

Nothing but I am going to start working on leaving the shoes on the bike and some sort of running/flying mount for next year.

Pretty rolling course with what felt like some decent climbs and my pace proves that. My HR was absolutely pegged when I got on the bike. The plan was to ride around 140-145 bpm as a bit of a test to see how bad/decent my run off the bike would be. As soon as I got going I was sitting around 165bpm and even after trying to get it to come down it stayed up there for the first 10 minutes or so. Finally after that it started settling back down to the mid 140s range.

The entire bike course I felt pretty good and honestly, was trying to do nothing but run the GF down. I had no idea how far ahead of me she was and knowing that she is a strong cyclist and the hilly nature of the course (where she excels) I had my doubts that I could catch her. However, I thought I could at least keep her in sight and then run her down on the run. I saw her at the one and only turn around at which time she was roughly a mile in front of me. Never saw her again after that and comparing post race, she rode 3 minutes faster than me. She is a rock star!

I cooked the bike a bit too much with the hills but I didn't plan to ride this one conservatively. With another HIM coming up in 6 more weeks I wanted to see how high I could push my effort and what the effects would be as a result. Obviously, this isn't HIM distance but I wanted to get out of my comfort zone a bit. At the end of the day, judging by my run times, I definitely went a bit too hard. It didn't cost me a ton but I think it added a couple minutes to my overall run but I learned a lot.

Pretty uneventful. Came in with my feet out of the shoes and ran off the bike at the line. Somehow I ended up on the opposite side of my rack so I had to slide the bike in and then duck under it to get to my shoes. First run sockless so slipped my feet into my Zoot's, grabbed my visor and number and took off running.

Maybe approach the rack from the correct side.

Decent run but I left some of it on the bike. Coming into this race in the middle of a build and given the elevation I thought I could hold at least 7:20s but the hills really sucked it out of me. Started off holding 7s flat and really felt like I was flying as I turned through the trails along the lake. I knew if I had any chance of catching the GF I had to keep it turned up because she was most likely at least running high 7s to very low 8s. Made it through the first 2.5 miles and then hit a long hill on the dirt road out and back that just sapped me of everything. It took all I had to keep the feet moving and my HR was spiking. It was during this time that I saw my gf run past me and with as strong as she looked I knew at that moment that she had handed it to me today. Nevertheless, I had some teammates out there I wanted to try and catch but only had a few miles left to do so.

After what felt like an eternity I finally reached the turn around on the gravel road and picked it back up on the down hill. Felt strong once again coming off the gravel and back onto the concrete, a longish run down hill again and then into the final climb before a flat .2 mile runout to the finish. Again, the climb just sucked it out of me but I did my best to keep it going and once I crest the hill I was able to find my speed and finished strong, with a good kick.

Not a whole lot as I'm still trying to find my limits. I guess if I were racing this again I'd take a little off the bike effort and see if that translates to a better run.

I really felt the elevation and lack of (perceived) oxygen. Also, my swim is horrible and I'm never going to get very far until I get that in line.


Great race although the switch to this weekend seemed to really have hurt attendance, at least according to what others were saying. It used to be early in the season and this year they pushed it back, only to have it fall on the same weekend as 70.3 worlds just down the street in Vegas. Then again, if it weren't for that I would have never squeaked into a podium spot. Talk about dumb luck.

Oh as for the GF, she went 8th female OA, 2nd AG and put 9 minutes into me by the time we were done. Humble pie served :)