Sylvan Beach Triathlon - Triathlon

We all lined up on the beach and they counted us down from 5 seconds. I ran to the water and for whatever reason, people who lined up in the front got to the water and then started walking. I duck dived in and around people to try to get moving quicker. This part went fine....everything else was a disaster.

Course is a rectangle and for whatever reason, I kept aiming at the wrong buoys. My sighting was right on, except that I was sighting the wrong buoy. Dude on a jet ski comes up and yells out to go left....I realized he was talking to me and stopped to figure out where the hell I was. I see a buoy and start aiming toward it....round it fine, and later find myself sighting off the wrong buoy AGAIN. WTF? This is not like me at all. I guess if I find myself in too much clean water, that probably means something is amiss!

After rounding the second buoy, I'm finally sighting the correct buoys and make it in pretty uneventfully. This was a disappointing swim for sure....this shouldn't have taken me any more than nine minutes (and based on my pace, would have been right there if I'd actually swam the course without all the detours!). Oh well, they can't all be great....and mentally, I was able to brush it off and finish strong.

Time on the RR is the time my Garmin said as the results seem to think it took me 54 minutes to do this....overall time looks correct, but the swim time is definitely wrong. Everyone else's times look like what they should be, so I'm assuming I came out 2nd in my AG as the next closest time was almost 12 minutes

Sight the correct buoys, dummy!

Transition was sloppy....I don't do a lot of sprint races, so I tend to rush through and things don't go as well as for other races. Probably could have been 20+ seconds faster here.

Again, time is from Garmin as they don't have my time listed

Think about what you're doing, don't rush, be smooth

Plan for the ride was to ride hard and see how I run off it....I don't race sprints often and my training is not geared toward sprint distances at the moment, so I really had no idea what to target....figured I'd just make an experiment out of it and I don't think it was too bad. I was planning to shoot for 181W, which is what I did in the ITT last weekend. Ended up with AP/NP of 180W, so right in the ballpark I was looking for. Legs never felt great, but they also didn't feel particularly bad....I have Buffalo Springs 70.3 in two weeks, so I was carrying a lot of residual fatigue going into this race (but I don't think my legs would perform well if I had tapered much, so no regrets on this).

After my crappy swim, I was blowing past a ton of people. I didn't get passed once the entire ride and passed many, so that was kind of cool. There was one girl in my age group who was faster than me, but she didn't quite make up enough time on me to pass me during the bike leg.

It must have been fairly windy out there as my AP/NP were the same as last week's ITT, but the speed was 1.3 mph slower (course was a little long, so my Garmin said average pace of 22.0 mph)....the roads were also not nearly as nice. That said, the beauty of a power meter is that a headwind and tailwind hurt the same amount :)

Coming into transition, I pulled my feet out of my shoes way too early (you can see transition, but then you turn right and then left before you actually get to it)....pretty sure the only photographer on the race course was there, so my only picture will be me on the horns with my shoes off! This is a silly mistake that I've now made twice.

Know the course so you know when to start pulling your feet out of your shoes...

This transition was actually pretty smooth (time is from my Garmin, but fastest in my AG). No issues with the transition itself, but when crossing the timing mat, I managed to hit the "lap" button on my Garmin twice, which ended my multisport activity....so at the start of the run leg, I had to fiddle around with my Garmin to reset the multisport activity and start a run

Be careful with the buttons you're pushing!

The run continues to be my weakness. The girl who eventually won my AG passed me convincingly within the first half mile....continued on with sub-7 paces -- no way I'm doing that! That said, I was VERY pleased with an 8:15 pace for a 5k after having biked at nearly 95% of FTP.

Martin, my bridge running buddy, passed me early on and I just told myself to keep him within sight. He pulled away early, but I reeled him back in (my splits were very even -- first two miles exactly the same, and the next about 5s faster) just after the turnaround and told him to hang on with me....I said, "You push me, I'll push you..." And about a moment later said, "Fuck 5k's....these hurt!" He dropped back and I continued on.

My running is progressing, but definitely not where I'd like for it to be. Whenever I'm in a situation like this, I try to figure out what's my limiting factor....why I can't make myself go faster. My HR was fine, my breathing was fine, but I just didn't have the turn over in my legs. Hopefully with continued (consistent) run training, I'll be able to run with the girls in my AG.

Very pleased with my run....not so much with my current run ability. Just gotta keep plugging away

After finishing, I drank a bottle of water, did a bit of stretching....but then was supposed to go out for an additional run (BS70.3 in two weeks -- needed some additional running this weekend), so I didn't do too much. However, since I was planning to run with Chris and he was volunteering, he couldn't get away till awards....and since I landed on the podium, I figured I should stick around for awards. So for a race that started at 7:10am and finished at 8:30am, I didn't actually get to my "warm down" run till 10:30am!


Horrible sighting and sloppy T1 certainly left a couple minutes on the table. Current run ability is my biggest limiter right now


Nice local sprint -- not a big production, but it's run well and I'd certainly do it again