St. Francis Health Center Topeka Tinman Triathlon - Short Course - Triathlon

The start could have gone better, I had contrasting goals for the start, first was to get to the left side of the pack so I could sight off of other swimmers while I was breathing and second was to run as much as possible in the shallow water before swimming, CCW & swimming to the left of the pack means you go for deeper water sooner, I was swimming at least 10 strokes watching most of the pack still running along the shore, consequently I had to put in a longer strong effort to get ahead of the people on my right before the first turn. In hindsight I should have just swam on the right of the pack, I can switch up my breathing just fine, could have gone left side for sighting on the first leg.. There was more contact that necessary at the start due to people running up the beach then diving out into the deeper water but I got away okay before the first turn bouy, swam nice and straight throughout and noticed midway through that I was really tired: pushing the pace well but breathing well too, so not slowing down. The downside to this was I was gassed when I hit the beach, there were a couple people from the previous wave that I shouldn't have had a problem running past going up the hill but that wasn't the case.

Manage the start a little better to avoid getting so gassed at the end. The physical layout of this start was pretty similar to Midwest Meltdown, and I went off the right side of the pack there with good results.

18th OA / 4th AG, was running a little slower than desired after the swim, rack location was not well suited to running in, dumping gear, grabbing bike and cruising out, had to carefully place my wetsuit and lift bike out to keep from knocking others stuff around, probably just a handful of seconds, mostly I was just tired and slow.

Really struggled on the bike, could not get the power up where it should be, ended up averaging 235W, down ~30W from KS 5i50* (*not a great benchmark without the swim but it was an oly, but fresh at the start). I couldn't mash the pedals without my legs instantly lighting up with muscle fatigue and pushing a high cadence wasn't working either. I think a lot of the problem was motivation, didn't prepare real well the previous week but also there wasn't much in the way of rabbits to chase either and it was also humid, something I haven't trained in much yet this year. Got passed early on by someone from my swim wave and I was not able to keep him in sight, turns out he was 45-49 though and I got him back on the run. With a couple miles to go I had changed my outlook from being disappointed with my bike output to looking forward to not feeling gassed heading into the run.

Towards the end there was a larger tractor backing up traffic at one of the intersections, we were able to get both direction of bike traffic past him okay, but it was another interruption of the race intensity.

ride harder, go faster. Cadence should have been mid 90's,

35th OA / 3rd AG. Lots of traffic in transition and similar issues with racking location as T1.

The dude who was first in my age group (and first overall) went through T2 in 19 seconds, given the overall length of Transition was almost 100m, that's better than 8min/mile thru transition, I need to stop wearing socks and put my shoes on faster.

run went okay, there were lots of people on the course from earlier waves, caught the guy who passed me on the bike about a mile in at the bottom of a hill then felt pretty good on the way up the hill so I was pleased. I knew the run finish had changed from when I last raced here 2 years ago but wasn't sure of the details, picked up the pace pretty good once back on the transition loop as I though we crossed over to the other side of the loop before the finish but we ended up running past the finish and around the transition then into the finish, The extra distance made it a nearly half mile finishing kick, ouch. Mostly this was just a hot humid suck-fest.

train, run faster.

sat in lake to cool off


heat & humidity and wasn't really feeling up for the race effort. I've been experimenting with various jerseys trying to keep cool, the long sleeve Desoto skin cooler was doing great until I this race, it don't work in humidity, only works if moisture can evaporate, don't think it was worse than most tritops though.


A good race, nice mix of first timers and some real fast timers too. One guy there had done the race every year for the past 33 years.