Maritime International Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

First 200m of the swim was a disaster. Everyone was jockeying for position out there and I never thought I was going to get out of it. When I finally did, the rest of the swim was, ahem, smooth sailing.

Work on sighting and breathing patterns.

What a disaster the bike mount was. Since I got so lucky with the rubber band and my shoes on the cleats in New Orleans, I tried it again. Well, I got up and onto the shoes, the bands broke, and then my feet slipped. So I stopped, ripped the shoes off the cleats, put them on, and took off. Only wasted about 30 seconds but I'm sure I looked ridiculous.

Either practice with the bands or just skip it and run in the shoes.

Bike went much better than I thought it would. Caught myself trying to chase down a few people but managed to settle down into my own race. Road got a little rough at some points which made for an uncomfortable ride. When I felt my legs start to burn I backed off.

Not much, nutrition plan worked out pretty well here. I might have downed my first bottle a little quickly but everything worked out okay so maybe not.

T2 went a lot better than T1! Nothing special here. Got it done and got out of transition. When I was rolling down the long drive into the transition area I noticed the person in front of me was taking his feet out so I did the same. No, I've never done that before but decided that was the best time to try.

Practice with the shoes on top or just clip out.

Boy did this go way better than I thought it would. Started out at a slightly uncomfortable pace - 6:45ish. I was running on the heels of another guy for about two miles before passing him. Around mile 3 I slowed to 7ish and at mile 4 my legs starting cramping. I slowed again to 7:15ish and finished like a champ.

Think about what I really need at the aid stations. I just kinda grabbed stuff on a whim, not very smart.

Lots of walking around, I though my legs were going to be jelly but this was not the case.


Why do we have to find negatives?! More training obviously. I know I have a long way to go on the bike. And that disaster of a T1.


Only issue with this race -- nobody seemed to know when we could take our stuff out of transition. I saw a number of people walking around (outside of the transition area) with their bikes so assumed it was okay to do so. After I grabbed my bike and started to walk out a USAT official stopped me and said something like, "Well it's not a USAT rule but..." So I asked one of the volunteers and he didn't know, but said he'd find out. So he walked over to the USAT official. They conferred for a bit and decided we weren't able to take our bikes out yet. So I grab everything but the bike and took it to my car. On my way back I saw yet MORE people taking their bikes out of transition so I just followed suit. Another alarming thing to note -- nobody was checking race number on the way out of transition, scary!

Overall, great race!