Lake Padden Triathlon - Competitive Course - Triathlon

I positioned myself in the middle front of the 3rd wave. I figured I start too fast anyway, so I might as well avoid running into people. I had a good swim, swam front crawl the whole way, and kept kicking to a minimum. I sighted a lot, every 2nd or 3rd breath, because I'm not very good at it and I'm not all that confident I can swim straight. I stayed mostly on course and finished eager to hit the bike. This was a large improvement over last year, when I swam the course in 19:59.

Learn to swim straight and sight every 5th breath. Get my head lower in the water and my feet up.

Estimated T1 based on Garmin. This was a slow transition as usual. Ran up the hill to transition, slowly took off my wetsuit, grabbed my bike stuff and ran out and up the hill before clipping in. I felt good and was 2 minutes faster than last year. I had an awesome spot right by the bike exit/entrance, so minimal time spent running in my bike shoes.

One day I will get out of my wetsuit quickly, but for now it is new and I'm not willing to abuse it :-)

I felt unprepared for this bike. I did not feel strong and took it easy up the hills. Roads were a little wet and I only tapped my brakes on a few blind corners. I stayed in aero using clip on bars for about 60% of the rid. 12 minutes and 2.5mph better than last year.

Train much more. This is the low hanging fruit.

This was a great transition for me. I changed into my running shoes so fast I had to stop and think about what I forgot. Wasted 10 seconds pulling a snickers bar out of my saddle bag.

Stage my area better, take off shoes on the bike.

No calf cramps! I learned to push my heels down on the bike and as a result I did not cramp like every one of my previous 4 races. Woohoo. Took it easy at the beginning, ramped up too much and started getting cramps in both quads halfway through. Eased up again, then ramped up and finished strong. Splits were 9:06, 8:15, 8:34, 8:58, 8:03. This was 6.5 minutes faster than last year but still my worse (relative) event.

I need to loose a few pounds and train a little more. My volume leading up to the race was around 12 miles per week. 15-20 would be better.

Walked around, ate a banana, hugged my son, kissed my wife, ran another 2.6 mile loop with my friend.


Body weight is too high (BMI of 26.4), bike endurance is poor.


The atmosphere was great and the course is awesome. Post race activities were OK. I liked the music but food was pretty limited compared to larger events.