The Beach Blast Triathlon - Olympic - TriathlonOlympic

Great! My best ows to date. Started to the side near the front. Did a couple of dolphin dives and started swimming steady but easy. One guy passed me and I latched on. We were close to the front of the pack by the first buoy and I felt strong so I passed him and picked up another draftee. Continued to swim steady and fairly hard until the 2nd buoy and turn for the beach. Drafted off several different people, then swam in hard the last 2-300 yards. Salt water rocks, great flotation, great visibility, and luckily calm for the swim. I know the swim diistance was short, but estimate I actually swam 1:35- 1:45 per hundred yds. Fastest time was 15:47, ex swimmer and Ironman (woman actually), next fastest time was 17:58.

Absolutely nothing.

Time includes 1:18 sec run from beach to transition area. They had mats at both beach exit and transition entrance, so actual T2 was 1:27. My HR hit 172 on run uphill from beach, so I took it fairly easy to get my HR back down some.

For this race, not much.

Good ride. I stayed very concious of my HR, staying high zone 3 on average. Passed several folks, and passed by a few. I felt like I had a good bit of reserve, and could have pushed it a bit harder, but I wanted to save some for the run. (What a waste.) Had one water bottle hand-off, and I forgot to drop the bottle off my bike, so I was stuck with an extra and no where to put it. 2 miles down the road I dropped it while trying to get it in my jersery pocket. Drank one bottle of gatorade, one of water, and took a gel with 5 miles left on the bike.

Ditch one bottle before grabbing another. Otherwise maybe ride even easier, although on this ride I purposely took it easier than on my last sprint 6 weeks ago.

OK.

Yuck! I think this was the worst run of my life. I started out the first mile in 8:03, faster than I intended, so I slowed the second, down to 9:12, slower than I wanted. I tried to pick the pace back up, but found it very hard. Near mile three I just died. I was very overheated and felt completely drained. I had 6 oz water leaving transition, but the first and only water stop was at 2.9/3.3 miles. (The race directors realized their error and actually sent people out on the course with water bottles from convience stores and set up another stop or two before the race was over.) From that point on I stopped and walked mutiple times, tryiing to get my HR down, my body temp down, and some energy back. I would walk until my HR came down, and try running again. About the third time that happened I just felt defeated. I haven't walked on a run since my fiirst couple months of training and it just mentaly wiped me out. I know it was much hotter than anticipated, and there were inadequate water stops. (One of the earlier fiinshers went down to heat exhaustion riight after he completed the race, and had to be treated by EMT's.) Finally, with about 1.5 miles to go, I came by a "new" water stop and begged a hat full of ice. The volunteers got to hear a near orgasmic shout of pleasure when I put that on my head, and they started laughing hard. I managed to run on in from just after that point, and finish up the race.

I don't know if it was the heat or insuffiicient endurance base that got me, but something certaiinly kicked my butt. I was very dissapointed with my performance in this run.

Not sure, except even more base running. I thought my run mileage dropped off too much the last 5 weeks of my training plan. Also, maybe go even easier on the bike, but again, I felt good coming off; tired, but not wasted. Oh, and bring my own ice.

Walked around drinking water. Hosed off from a tap. Ate a banana, drank a Pepsi (no Coke to be found), and then had a strawberry milk. After about 15-20 min felt human, exhausted but human.


The heat and insufficient base is all I can come up with at this point. I keep reminding myself that up until 6 month ago I was totally out of shape. I hadn't done anything athletic in 20+ years.


Not enough drink stations, but the directors tried to compensate after they saw what was happening. Hopefully they will do better next year, as I intend to come back if scheduling permits.