Echo Triathlon - Sprint Distance - TriathlonSprint

Ugh. I can only laugh about this now. I waded in 5 minutes prior to start and realized I had left my goggles in the bike area. Had to run ~150 yards uphill to retrieve them and ran back in to the water with under a minute to start, out of breath and heart racing - not an ideal way to begin my first OW swim! Could not catch my breath and establish a rhythm in the first 250 - 500 yards; experienced a bit of panic and stopped more than a few times. Found myself continually drifting to the right. Finally established a bit more of a stroke on the final 3rd but by that time was really gassed.

Everything. I had trained several times in open water leading up to this but clearly was still unprepared for the blender, breathing bilaterally, sighting and drafting. Have a lot of work to do on this and nowhere to go but up.

Suit leg got stuck on the timing chip

Remove timing chip first before slipping out of suit

Felt like I had a decent enough ride but was disappointed when I saw the final time.

Bear down and get more aggressive on the mild false flat uphill

It tells you a lot about what type of race I had when my best and only good segment was the T2 transition

Again, I thought I had a decent enough run in terms of feeling good throughout, and passed quite a few runners (though got passed more often), and even finished with a little bit of a kick, so I was disappointed to see the 29:51 time. I think my brick training paid off in that I did not feel dead-legged at the outset - just need to lengthen the stride and pick up the pace. Really enjoyed the course and scenery.

Keep up the brick work, strength training and occasional speed work

Gatorade G3, walked around a lot, got a massage, bagel and granola bar. Felt OK post-race, like I could have pushed more on the bike and run


Bad swim set the tone for the day


I thought this race was well-organized with lots of enthusiastic volunteers and a great scenic course. TriUtah could not be faulted that the reservoir level was very low from the recent drought conditions and therefore the water was muddy and shallow. Despite my race blunders, I enjoyed the event.