Columbia Downtown Triathlon - Triathlon

The lesson here: Always go with your first answer kids! I put down 1:20/100, knowing it was faster than I could go. However, I felt bad and changed it to 1:35...big mistake. The first 50 or so swimmers seemed to have clean water and moved along nicely. When I jumped in, things started great. I passed the lady in front of me on the 2nd lane, and then things got clogged. By the halfway point, it was a traffic jam of people. You could pass someone, but you wouldn't get anywhere because you'd wait at the wall anyway. At one point, I was standing and waiting for everyone to push off the wall, just standing. This is the last pool swim where I don't start near the front!

Seed myself higher! I'd rather have to let one or two people pass me than wait on 20 people to clog everything up!

Not bad, especially for the first race of the year.

Not a lot

All that biking is paying off. I was only 9 seconds from having the fastest bike split in my AG, which is pretty sweet. What's funny is that I was pretty frustrated on the course: no one stayed to the left, and every lap it seemed like there were more and more inexperienced riders who were slow and had a tendency to wander. So, I basically went harder each loop. On the 2nd, I emptied my water bottle, since I knew I wouldn't need it. On the third, I went pretty hard: charged every hill and passed everyone I could. I felt like I was going hard, but not killing myself.

Nothing really. If I'd known I was 9 seconds away from 1st place bike split in my AG, I'd have gone a bit faster!

Not great, but this could get faster. T2 is always slow because I have to put on socks...

Just be faster, I guess.

Like usual, I feel like I could've gone harder and faster. It's tough since I didn't have many people around me to compete with, but I need to be able to go harder longer. Luckily, the foot didn't really hurt, which I was worried about!

Oh, and there's no way it was 3 miles. I clocked 2.75.

Run harder?

Not much, drank some Coke and ate some banana.


This was pretty indicative of my fitness level.


A few things:
1. no idea where the bathrooms are to start the race.
2. The swim is a mess after the first 50 people. People don't seem to have much of an idea of what they can swim.
3. Lots of inexperienced riders wandering on the bike course. Stay right people, pass on the left.