Hy-Vee Triathlon 5150 U.S. Championship - Triathlon

Holy crap, this was just about the worst swim of my short career.
It was roughly 200m to the first turn buoy, and before I was even half way to it I could see that I was being left in the dust by everyone else. I'm honestly not sure how or where I went wrong, but seeing my time - I just don't know WTF happened. I was 6 minutes slower than AG Nats. Does a wetsuit make THAT much of a difference???

Go Fasterrrr!!!

No wetsuit on the swim means no suit to fight in T1. Yay!
I think that I executed this one pretty well. I could have moved faster and this is definitely a place where not having shoes pre-clipped added time.

Not much. I'm content with this one, and my time compares favorably to others in the event.

Driving this course the day before, I was kinda like "WTF??". It looked hilly as hell on the further out parts near the airport. During the race, however, it turned out that we had tailwinds to help us up those hills when heading out, and the headwinds on the way back didn't seem too terrible. Screwed up one downhill because I mistakenly thought we had to make a 90-degree turn at the bottom of it when we actually went straight. I didn't realize it until I was halfway down, so I lost a little momentum there by not taking it as fast as I could have.

At one point, on the biggest individual climb of the course on the way out, there was a group of spectators in costumes, with signs, cow bells, etc... on my way up the hill I high fived a guy dressed in a Gumby costume, the CleanBottle guy, and some other random stranger. It was a lot of fun :)

Overall, I executed fairly well in terms of staying within myself and not burning out. I approached the entire race as "a training day with a finisher's medal", so to be kind of taking it easy a little bit and still turn in this time, I am pleased.

I need to re-think my Perpetuem use, however, as I had Perpetuem burps on the run. I don't know if it was too many calories, or drinking too late into the bike... but it tasted nasty the second time around.

Did not take my feet out of the shoes on the bike, so I gave up some time there.
Helmet came off and shoes went on quick. The race belt was slow going on, but that's it. Grabbed my little handheld water bottle and headed to Run Out.

Nothing. It was a HUGE transition area, so this time isn't all that terrible.

Not my best run, but not my worst, either. I would actually call this average for me, lately.
For as much as the Run is where I continue to put in the most work in what little training I do, this is where I seem to continue to need the most work.

Given my goals for the day, however, I'm quite ok with this. I executed a bike & run that, while not OLY fast, I think I can replicate the efforts this weekend at my Half.... which is a far more important goal for me.

I need to start doing race-pace work. I think that I've kinda hit a plateau with Zone 2 stuff.

The amount of food and schwag at this event was absolutely incredible. Fresh fruit, ice cream, ice cold drinks, and a whole tent area full of vendors giving away stuff. I grabbed my finishers medal and some water and then headed for a free massage. After that, I was all about methodically hitting every vendor for a few samples of whatever they were giving away :)


I knew going into this event that I wasn't an actual competitor, so I took a longer view toward Rev3 CP this coming weekend, and beyond to B2B full, and instead chose to treat this event as a training day.

Perhaps in some future year I might get back to this event and be better suited to actually compete, but if nothing else, it was a great first-class experience.


Race start was delayed due to some freakish weather blowing through early on.

Volunteers were EVERYWHERE. Local crowd support was fantastic!