Columbia Triathlon - Triathlon

My expectations for the swim were to ‘git er done’. I thought I placed myself in a good spot with this deep water start. I could see one of the far buoys and it seemed like a logical spot for the shortest distance from the start area to the far buoys. It seems that quite a few other people thought this too. I ended up in the middle of about 10 swimmers – all of us with varying abilities to swim straight in open water. So I was caught in a pack with swimmers going in various forwad directions. I ended up resorting to my 20 strokes of freestyle followed by 20 strokes breaststroke – repeat – must sooner than I anticipated.
I t also took probably 300 yards for me to get comfortable in the wetsuit. I felt very restricted and this did not change for several minutes.
Given my training base my time was as expected.


Next time I will align myself better with the first start buoy and first route buoy and study the route a bit better.

This is a challenging bike course with some good hills. I love the fact that this race has older athlete in the first waves. Makes for a wide open ride for most of the way. The roads were wet from misting rain and fog. My glasses were continually fogging up for the 1st half of the ride. On some of the downhills I was a bit more tentative due to the rain and one hill in particular I was very tentative. There are some hills that have curves and you can’t quite see what is around the corner (as in is there more hill or does it flatten out). Last year I didn’t get out of aero position in time and was terrified the entire way. All in all I think I had a good solid ride given my training.

Anti-fog treatment for glasses.

Couldn’t find my stuff immediately.

Remember to actually use the details of my rack area (like the big bright pylon right next to my bike). I had noted it but then completely forgot about it until I ran past it!

Just sort of kept running. Did not try to go too fast or too slow. Walked some of the hills. This was my slowest run segment to date at this distance. Didn't necessarily feel tired but just no energy or inclination to go faster.

Got some food and headed home.


I did not put in the time to improve over last years race. Mind and heart not in training over the past 8 weeks and also not in the race.


This is a terrific event and this was the 30th year. Well organized and supported. Very competitive -- female 55+ masters winner time of 2:31:18!! I love the big event atmosphere and the wonderful support.

I headed into this race thinking I would be about 10 minutes slower than last year given my training. I was spot on with this assessment. There is a possibility I could have found some time in every segment if I had pushed myself at bit more but I just wasn’t up for it. It was almost as if I “just showed up”. I was really, really tired when I got home. All in all, it was a good solid performance but not what I had hoped for earlier in the year. Even so, I moved up a few slots this year (12th vs 15th).