Oslo Triathlon - Sprint - TriathlonSprint

Well, I'm not winning any race with that time...BUT I did swim faster/smoother on this race than I did on the last one. The start was a bit chaotic, but I took a tip from here that said to hold off to one side, and that worked very well. I was back of MOP or top of BOP (depending on one's perspective) out of the water. I got swam over multiple times, and didn't freak out. I swam over a couple of people. And lots of hitting of the feet; my feet and me hitting others. All while remaining relatively calm. Just gonna have to get faster over the winter...

Continue to train swimming; going to try and increase my pool workouts to 3 this winter (we will see...). Getting more comfortable in open water, and now I've done a "big" race and didn't drown my confidence going forward is much improved...just need to take advantage of that.

Longish run-in from the water. 200m or so. I didn't account for that!

Transition was unbelievably packed. My only real gripe for the race. My "layout" was forced to be on the other side of where my handlebars/helmet/glasses were and where I would run out...

So, overall, a pretty OK T1, considering the challenges.

Side note - the RO had a Neutral Zone" out of T1 headed to bike course. It passed the main parking lot, a school, and heavy foot-traffic area. Everyone was given up to 90 secs for this zone, in order to get folks to go slow (<17km/hr). It worked pretty well, and I think it helped to avoid some potentially bad juju...

Not sure. I was okay for the T1, the jog up hurt a bit, and the crampedness in the transition area are hard to do much about.

I do need to get smoother on wetsuit removal. The cramped area made this even more frustrating.

I had a good bike :) My best leg of the race, by far! I felt fast, passed quite a few peeps (which makes me ride faster ofc), etc. The course was very well policed by both volunteers and police! There was only one traffice jam that was a little dicey to get through with some cars and a bus backed up and I had to ride down center line of the road to pass them with oncoming traffic.

I made one key mistake on the bike. I had sports drink in my bottle (about 600ml / 15 oz). AND I drank almost all of it. This would come to haunt me on the run. I usually only do long-distance stuff, and am used to sipping on a sports drink over the course of a long race. A sprint I am not used to. Bit lesson learned here...

I had one little "incident" with a fast guy. I was passing a group and had another group to pass just about about 5-10m ahead, and I was going faster than them. But not nearly as fast as the "fast guy". Anyway, I was quite afraid of getting a drafting penalty so I held out to the left between the two groups. At the time, I did not know about the fast guy...he was none too please with me. Said a few things, made bell ringing sound, and as he rode passed me, he flicke his hand to right in a rather dismissive kind of way! :) I took it that way at the time. Afterwards, unemotionally I can say that he was just haulin' butt and didn't need me sitting in front of him. No harm no foul...He may not feel that way tho!

For a sprint next time, I will have only some water in my bottle and about half of what I had. 10 oz or less.

Continue to ride. I felt really good on the ride. Right at my limit, breathing hard, etc. But in a good way :)

T2 was ok. A bit long. Actually got cut off by a dude with cross-bike, only for him to jog slower than me to his line...frustrating.

practice

Oh that cramp! I'm 99% sure I got it because of the sports drink on the bike. Too much fluids, and too much sugar/electrolytes for a sprint race. The cramp hit me at 200m into the woods...and stayed the rest of the run. I trained to run 4:30/km pace for this race. Had it "in the bag" so to speak. Target was 22:30 (which would have put me Top 5 for my AG for the run btw). BUT I couldn't do it. I held 5:10-5:15 pace for about 3.5 km and was in agony. Then started to slowly kick it up a bit, and km 4 was a 4:59 and my last km was a 4:36, but it wasn't enough. Simply put, the run sucked. But like I said, I learned a big lesson on this one!

See bike leg. Don't get too full of fluids before the run. period.

I will run this one faster next time...

Stretched. Ate some fruit. Drank a chocolate milk. Rode back to my brother-in-law's house about 5km from the race site. Thankful it was downhill the whole way home.

I was truly surprised how tired/exhaused I was after a sprint. Not nearly as sore as I was after my oly, but much more exhausted feeling. Recovery beers and pizza that evening tasted so good!!!


I swim slow. So I need to fix that!

That cramp on the run stopped me from getting a top 10 in my AG. If I could swim, and didn't cramp, I think I would have been 6-7 mins faster; good for around 7th place in my AG.


This is Norway's oldest triathlon, and you can see that that experience has not been lost. SK Rye, the RO, did a heck of a job, and I would recommend this race to anyone who's in Norway in August!!! Very well organized race, with lots of volunteers! The transition area is TOO SMALL, and so transitions were a chore, but that would honestly be my only gripe. Nice little expo with good deals, and plenty of post-race fruit and drinks. The tech t-shirt and finisher's medal were nice too.