Pat Griskus Olympic Triathlon - Triathlon

First OW swim of season! Yeah, I've had better ideas. At least I had my Bad Idea tri kit. First wave out, but not too stressed. Navigation was shitty; at least 2x I found myself way inside the diamond. Got dizzy about halfway through the swim, seemed worse when breathing to my left, bilateral breathing helped a bit (if only because it was an extra second without rotating).

Train OW before first race. Train longer swims leading up to race (had been doing max 500 yd repeats for past several weeks).

Transition time included run up from beach; because of dizziness I walked most of the way, and I took a little while getting ready for the bike. Also due to wearing different tri kit than usual (CCC), took extra few seconds to load gel in pockets.

Add S-R bricks to training. Tape gels to frame or find alternative fuel basket.

Second race with Kestrel; still getting used to compact crankset. Nice to have the extra low gears for some of those climbs. No bottle handoff this year, but real mild weather + less fluid consumption during training = one bottle was sufficient for this ride. Kind of dizzy at the start, couldn't really push too hard. First climb felt tough, but GPS trace shows reasonable time. Climbing up Chohees and Flanders was a lot easier, and the Griskus Sprint Hills were the easiest yet (the marshal at Middle Rd Tpke/Hamilton complimented my climbing, and I was all, yeah, that was a lot easier than the past).

Nothing.

Lost my spot! I was in the center section, 3rd rack from the end, on the bike in side, about a quarter of the way from the right end. Only when I ran in I didn't see my stuff. (I saw a wetsuit hanging up, but I didn't see my red bag underneath, and all the other things looked the same as everyone else's.) So I second-guessed myself and looked on different racks, because clearly I had remembered incorrectly. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably 20 s, I said, you know what, I know where my stuff is, I'm going to go there and dig, and sure enough it was under my wetsuit, which was exactly where I had thrown it when I came out of the water.

Besides that, no problems changing or heading out.

I think part of why I did this was I didn't actually visualize myself running to that spot. I've done this race 7 times now, so I'm real familiar with each event, race organization, the venue, the surrounding area, where to stop for coffee, etc. And maybe that translated to, "Meh, I know where my transition is, I don't need to actually visualize it". So that's a thing I should do regardless of how many times I've done this race, or even if the racks are numbered.

Ah, the run, my old frenemy. Legs felt like lead, just couldn't get them moving. But! I ran the entire time, down and back up Fun Hill, through aid stations, and I negative split the course. Average pace was about what I've been training at for long runs.

Train the run.

Walk around. Gather stuff, pack up car, change shirt,


Training volume (?).


Good local race, tough course, great volunteers.