Soma Triathlon - Triathlon

Had specific goals of getting to my corral on time and also seeding myself in the first couple rows. FAIL... Don't know what my problem is but I continue to be late to my swim start. I was in the back of my wave getting into the water and started swimming to the start line. About 25yds from the start buoys, I got kicked in my left wrist pretty hard which is normal. I looked down and noticed my 910xt was dangling and about to fall off my wrist. Assuming it was jarred loose after the kick, I grabbed it real quick and went to fasten it back on. Problem was the clasping bracket got kicked completely off my strap and it couldn't fasten. As I realize this, the announcer gives the 15 seconds till start call. You gotta be f'in kidding me!!! Started freaking out a bit because I knew I couldn't hold onto my watch during the swim. Jammed it down my wetsuit real quick, which unfortunately let a lot of water into my wetsuit, then the horn went off. I was still somewhat flustered but started swimming. To make matters worse, I was towards the back and had to pass about 30 people until I got to open water. The constant zig-zagging and acceleration caused me to loose my breath and I had to pull over for a breather. What a mess!! I'm usually a good swimmer and never have these issues. Took about 15 seconds to settle down then got back into it. Had open water nearly the entire swim but my stroke was a mess. Just could never settle down after the watch incident. I'm bummed with myself for not working on a IMAZ specific item (starting at front), but I think this may have been a blessing in disguise. Up until this race, I never had issues in the water so I'm happy it happened before IMAZ. God only knows how chaotic that start will be!

Turn my brain on and get to the water entrance early. This is something I can control and will make sure to do so on November 17th. I need to start in the first couple rows because it will save me a lot of energy. Zig zagging around slower swimmers is a disaster... Also, I need to really focus on settling down at IMAZ and focus on my stroke efficiency.

This was my first time using a wetsuit stripper. I had 3-4 different folks yelling at me and kind of froze at first. I didn't have my torso out of the wetsuit so I had to do that before sitting down and getting the suit ripped off. Got to my bike and got everything on quick. Good transition

Get my torso out of wetsuit immediately upon exiting water.

Hopped on the bike and felt good. Went into this race with a conservative game plan of 130 HR on the bike. That's what I'm planning on doing for IMAZ so I wanted to do the same here and see how I felt. Out of the water, my HR was at 145 which was too high so I took it easy the first mile. Got it back down to 130 fairly quickly and was able to keep it between 125-135 for most the ride. I got around 140 on some of the hills but overall I was pretty happy with this performance. I will say it was tough letting everyone fly by me.... A couple negatives were I had to stop and pee twice and I didn't have an aero hydration system. I had to stop three times to fill up my water bottle which was annoying. Between all the stops, I probably lost 4-5 minutes.

My HR started escalating on the 3rd loop. I was probably pushing it cause I was almost done but I have to make sure not to do that at IMAZ. Either way, my legs felt great and I was ready to run. Also need to find an aero bottle for the bike

This is another area where I screwed up before the race and didn't setup transition properly. I wanted to practice getting on my CEP compression socks in T2 at Soma. I forgot to prep my socks so I had to do that while in T2. This wasted a solid 1-2 minutes which was extremely frustrating. My normal T2 time is 60-90 seconds.

Make sure socks are ready before race starts

Felt great off the bike. Legs were totally fresh and I had to really focus on keeping my pace in-check. Could have opened it up early but wanted to stay in a target HR zone the first 6 miles. Did a great job of that then got after it the last 7 miles. Ended up negative splitting the run and ran 7:20 miles the last 3 miles which is great for me. Also proved I paced the race correctly and will use this experience at IMAZ.

Nothing

Water, gatorade, walked around with my wife. Felt totally fine


Conservative race plan


Great race. Bike course is goofy but the positives outweigh the negatives. Lifetime appeared to also step their game up in the transition security dept which was good to see. I would recommend this race to others.