River Cities Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

This was by far my most difficult swim although I was 4 seconds per 100m faster than my first tri so it was slight improvement- lol. I actually felt tons better though- no panic issues but my heart rate did keep getting too high which slowed me down considerably. I just don't have the cardiovascular endurance built for that distance. Definitely need more swim training.
I have pretty moderate/severe heart damage and now see why the cardiologist wasn't too thrilled with me doing a longer distance swim. My muscles never fatigued but my heart sure did. I did sight well and stayed near the outer edge where the kayakers were just in case. I did fine though was just forced to go extremely slow to keep my heart rate in check.
They also needed more kayaks on the water. One man was in real trouble, swam over me and tried to cling to me and almost pulled us both under and the nearest kayak was over 50-100m away at least. It was pretty scary for us both. We did get their attention and he got to one but it was scary for a little bit.

Swim more. I knew my swim training was not where I'd have liked it to be but I could easily do twice the distance in the pool nonstop so I really thought I was better prepared. I've never taken the swim lightly but I did underestimate this one. Lesson learned.

I was actually pretty quick once I got to transition but I took my time walking up the beach to get there. My dd wanted to high five and hug me and that was more important than time because I knew I'd be one of the last finishers anyway.

Nothing really. I can get my gear on relatively fast and go- I've had 1:30 second T1 before but I prefer to savor the moment with my family and usually have to let my heart rate come down before I get on the bike anyway. Heart disease really screws up your times- hehe.

This was by far my toughest course and distance and my speed was faster than both my previous tri's. This one was 18.2 miles with about 12-14ish of it being hills so I am actually very pleased with my times. I have been riding a good bit more and working harder in spin class and I could tell. Not that it made me fast compared to everyone else but for me it was improvement so I'm excited about that. I can't wait to see what I can do on another flat course.

I really need to train better for hills. My speed is slowly but surely improving but I just don't have any hills to train on. On the flats I was able to average 17-18 mph and on the downhills I was up near 27-28 (which was awesome- I pedaled every downhill also so I was proud of myself for not being afraid to keep pushing it instead of just coasting). It was the uphills that killed me and my time- imagine that- lol.

This was the first time I actually had those wobbly, won't work right legs. I was actually excited about that feeling because I knew I worked the bike to the best of my ability. We had to run downhill into transition with our bikes though and I had to go completely into one side, down it and back up the other to get to my bike rack. They didn't want the mount line before and dismount line after the hill. This just made each transition slightly longer cause you were going up a hill and down a hill pushing the bike.

Once again nothing really. I really am pretty fast at getting my gear on and going. My time is lost getting to and from transition usually. It's often because of the distance to get to and from it and having to let my heart rate come down because I have heart damage. I can't really change that.

I loved/hated my 910xt. I forced myself to stick to my training alerts for run/walk so I kept a steady pace the entire time. I hated it though when it would vibrate for me to run- hehe. At one point I wanted to pitch it because I had to run up the incline and walk down it- stupid watch- hehe. I was a little slower (by 30 seconds) than my previous two tri's but I was even happy with that as this course had inclines, it was 96 degrees and I am battling PF so each step of the last mile and a half was torture. I did actually manage to pass two other turtles and kept my lead that I worked dang hard on the bike to get over three other people. That was huge for me.

Nothing really here either. I have increased my running slowly and steadily since January and it's getting better in my stand alone times but in a tri I'll probably always be slow. Right now though, I'm just working on building a base and keeping my heart rate down. I was slow as heck but I was still thrilled with my entire race.

I walked around for a few minutes then went and got post race meal and drinks and sat and enjoyed the food and music with my family.


My biggest issue is my heart damage from cancer treatments so I really can't change that. Eventually I will have valve transplant surgery and it'll be interesting to see if I get better or worse after that.
For this course though, lack of OWS opportunities and hills to train on for the bike hurt my times as well.


I want to clarify the too hard above. I only chose this because just right wasn't exactly right either. The course was extremely difficult and challenging for me. But that's strictly because of my heart and training issues. I loved it though. With the shorter distances on flat courses, I have sometimes felt like the races were too easy- not that they weren't challenging either- for me any course will be a challenge because of my heart. So while none are easy this one was very difficult. But I truly feel like I accomplished something major today and it's because the course was soooo dang hard for me. I really had to dig deep to get it done but that makes the finish even sweeter.