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 Swim
Comments: This is a good swim course. First, the water is clean. By clean, I mean no sediment and no gross squishy stuff or seaweed. It's better than the Potomac, and way better than Culpepper. The white on my suit was not all brown afterward, either. The swim waves were pretty small, and I didn't have any problems with crowding or getting hit or punched. They did the waves by estimated swim time, and I think that really helped. No one swimming over me or swimming too slow in front of me. The atmosphere felt really friendly and low-key. This was my favorite tri swim ever. And my time was pretty good, too. I attribute that to the wetsuit. Three things to know about the course: 1-the middle point was not well-marked. It was just kind of unclear where we were supposed to go. There seemed to be too many buoys or something. I'd done the pre-race clinic the week before, but the course was different on that day, so I got confused mid-race. Fortunately, there were enough people in front of me that I could see, so I just followed them. I actually managed to draft a bit in this course, which I usually don't have the presence of mind to do. 2-the last turn before the end of the course is not a buoy, but rather a big cement thing - some kind of water control, I guess - and if you don't know that, it's very confusing. I only knew because I'd gone to the clinic the week before. You swim around the big cement thing and then within about 25-50 yards you are at the finish. I wish I had swum a little faster going into the last bit. I didn't because you can't quite see the finish, and I wasn't sure how much farther I had to go. 3 - last thing is that you should swim right up the boat ramp, as far as possible. The boat ramp is covered in slimy algae, and volunteers were having to actually pull people up out of it because if you tried to stand up too soon, you would just slip and fall back into the water. I felt a little weird swimming past standing people, but it's better than wasting time trying to climb a slippery ramp. What would you do differently?: Swim up the ramp even further than I did, and swim faster going into the last turn.  Transition 1
Comments: I'm pretty good with transitions - probably the immense amount of time I spend setting it up and thinking about it. I also don't seem to have a problem removing my wetsuit, so this transition went smoothly, with better than average time. I didn't have any trouble throwing everything into the plastic bag because I had spread it way out in the morning, so that I could just throw things on top of it and they would go in. What would you do differently?: Nothing.  Bike
Comments: This is the only part of this race I didn't like. First, I was uncomfortable about the narrow coned-off race path. It was nerve-wracking to have to pass or be passed with such a narrow space. I am not a great biker - I ride mostly on my trainer. This is a hard course for bad bikers. I also crashed - hard. I wobbled as someone was passing me, and we hit. I went down, the other person managed to stay up. Fortunately, it was before I had gotten up to speed. It knocked the wind out of me, cut up one elbow, bruised a few ribs, and put a dent in my helmet, but after a few minutes I was able to get up and finish the race. It didn't help my bike split any, though, or my confidence. The rest of the race was better (hard to get worse after that), except that it was my longest bike race ever and by the third lap I was drained. Because I'm not confident on the bike, I had trouble eating and drinking and maintaining balance, so I didn't eat or drink much. I would pay for that later. Also, on my first lap, the men's leaders passed me on their final lap, and that was harrowing. They were riding in a tight group, 3 or 4 of them, at a really high speed, and they were passing people in that narrow coned-off area - but passing them on both sides. Sometimes one of them would ride right up into grassy shoulder of the road on the right while the others passed someone on the left. It was impressive, but scary. Another issue was that the faster male riders often did not announce themselves when passing. This led to several near crashes for me. Overall, I think this was a difficult bike course for a newbie biker. What would you do differently?: Ride more carefully, practice more on actual roads and with other riders. Not crash. Eat and drink more. Transition 2
Comments: I was pretty wiped out by the time I got to this transition. No problems racking the bike, but I took off running with my helmet still on and had to go back and take it off. I really had to pee at that point too, but I didn't know where the bathrooms were, so I asked the volunteers at the transition exit. It turned out they were behind me, on the other side, so I had to run all the way back again to use the portapotty. I think my transition time wasn't actually too bad all things considered. What would you do differently?: Notice where the bathrooms are before the race (although it was probably too dark to see them), and take another minute to eat and drink something.  Run
Comments: This was a great run. All shaded, no big hills, wooded. It's out and back so I got to see the winners coming in as I was heading out. The music one of the volunteers had playing mid-course was a great pick-me-up. I was banged up from my bike crash and hadn't eaten or had much to drink for most of the race, so I should have felt horrible, but I actually felt great. I've never done this distance before, so I ran conservatively. I think I could have run quite a bit faster. However, I was hungry, and had I really pushed it, I might have gotten even sicker than I did afterward. What would you do differently?: Eat and drink more. And maybe even drink some of the yellow stuff they give out instead of just water. Post race
Warm down: This is where things went downhill. First, I realized as soon as I stopped that my bike crash injuries were worse than I'd realized. I was bleeding quite a big from one elbow, which began to sting, and my ribs hurt. I got a bandage from the medical people, who said my arm was fine, just some road rash. I didn't realize then how badly I'd hurt my ribs. Then I started to feel dizzy and I sat down. I ate a piece of bread someone brought me. I should probably have had some gatorade and a gel or some candy instead. About ten minutes after that I was so dizzy I couldn't stand, and then I started to feel sick. Thank goodness my plastic bag was delivered on time and I had no problems finding it. I didn't feel well enough at that point to worry about it. By the time I got home I was one seriously unhappy camper. I spent most of the day on the bathroom floor, swearing off triathlon forever. I'm still going to do this one next year, but I am going to eat and drink more, even if I have to stop my bike to do it. I do not want a repeat of my "warm down." What limited your ability to perform faster: Crashing on the bike, not eating and drinking enough, but mostly I'm happy with my first Olympic tri times. Event comments: This was my first Olympic and other than a difficult bike portion, I was happy with it. I think the swim and run courses were excellent. Also, this race has by far the best swag ever. I got an awesome tech T - much better quality than anything I've gotten before - socks, a towel, a run hat (great style and quality - I actually wear it), a bag, a cooler bag, and a water bottle. In spite of the difficult bike course and the pain-the-neck transition and early morning start, I think I will do this again next year. Last updated: 2015-11-28 12:00 AM
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United States
Reston Triathlon
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Overall Rank = /
Age Group = 45-49
Age Group Rank = 0/
This is my first local race, but I had to get up earlier than for any other race I've done - 4:30am. I packed up everything carefully the night before, got up and drank some coffee, then left the house, wondering why I do these things to myself. I brought a bagel with me, but couldn't eat anything. I can't eat that early in the morning.
This race is tough to set up for. There are two transition areas. You have to drive to Transition 2 (bike to run) at some god-awful time in the morning, park your car, and set up your T2 area - in the dark. I always stress about transition areas, so this was a little more nerve-wracking and OCD than usual.
After you set up T2, you have to get on your bike, with all your gear for T1, and ride your bike about 1 mile to the swim start and location of T1 (swim to bike). It was really dark out, and I had a headlight, but it was scary. I couldn't see the road well, and there were cars on the road, even at that hour. There were other people making their way there, but I was still a little unclear about which way to go. Would have been a lot better with a friend.
So I got to the swim start and set up T1. It took me a long time because after the race you don't go back to T1, since you are at T2, which is at the high school, where the run and bike finish. That means you have to set up your transition area at T1 so that everything goes into a big plastic bag (given by the race organizers), so that volunteers can pick up your bag and transport it for you to T2, where you can pick it up after the race. I am totally OCD already about the transitions - not nervous about any other part of the race, just setting up transition areas - so it took me forever to get everything just right. This is me, not the race organizers. The big plastic bag really made it pretty easy.
When I was finally done I tried again to eat some bagel (they even had some bagels and breads there for racers), but still couldn't get anything down.
It was still pretty dark when I went over and got my chip and got marked. Then I hung around waiting for the swim start, and was finally able to relax.
There is a pool at the lake that some people were warming up in, but it was wetsuit legal and I felt pretty confident about the swim, so I didn't bother. I DID go to the swim clinic the week before and get a practice run in on the course, though. That really helped.