Mooseman Triathlon Festival - Half Iron Distance - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Just like last year, I had come into my first tri of the year a little overconfident of my swimming ability. The problem isn't so much my ability, as it is controlling this problem I refer to as "cannon kick" Whenever I start a race, be it running or tris, I get so ramped up when the gun goes off that my heart starts racing and my breathing gets kind of labored. About 15seconds into my wave's start, I again started to get overwhelmed as far as my breathing goes and it only got worse as I tried to work through it, to the point that I wasn't really tolerating having my face in the water at all! I did a few side strokes and said to myself "F__CK THIS! I am not going to side stroke the entire swim like I did in Wildbear last year, especially not for 1.2miles!" I started to get into a rhythm where I took a breath every second stroke, which actually settled me down quite a bit. At that point I heard the next wave going, which meant the girls were going to be on my heels any minute, so I tried to pick up the effort slowly as I became more comfortable. I even managed to get into breathing on every third stroke for short periods of time and increse my effort a bit. Eventually, I fought my way back to the middle of the pack of the yellow caps (my wave), and had no real problems with navigation.

I just need to learn how to settle down at the beginning of races. Hopefully this will come with more experience, and it isn't as big of a problem when I do road races, because I have more control over my breathing, but having my head submerged just doesn't help

Things didn't get any better when I got out of the water and into T1. First of all, I'm extremely light-headed. Second, they had wetsuit strippers, which I wasn't used to. I have zippers at the ankles of my wetsuit and I didn't unzip them before laying down on the carpet for the strippers and my ankles were TRAPPED!! F_CKING A!!! So I start kicking my legs a little to try to help and I get the most vicious charliehorse cramp in my left calf muscle! DOUBLE F_CKING A!!! Anyway, I finally pry the suit off my ankles, thank the strippers and slowly make my way to the bike, praying the cramp in my Left calf goes away. First thing I do when I get to my bike is turn on my Garmin to give it time to get the sattelite signal it needs while I get my shoes and helmet on. Now I am not the fastest guy in transition, but the GPS still didn't get the signal when I was ready to roll, so I stood there for another 20-30 seconds, praying to the satellite gods to give us a signal, but it was futile. I ran out of transition and tried to put the swim and T! behind me (literally as well as figuratively) which thankfully, I did :)

From now on, I am going to turn on the Garmin when I leave transition to go do the swim and let it sit there until I get into T1 which will give it way more time than it needs to access the satellites and I won't have to wait for it.

I wish I had the Garmin during the ride, mostly for the HR info. I tried to turn it on and use only the HR monitor, but couldnt remember how to do it. I have been a little reliant on using the HR monitor lately, and haven't hooked up the powertap yet, so I had to go by RPE and try to stay in a comfortable zone, which I think I did pretty well considering.

I think I need some aerobars or even an tribike! :)

Not too much to say here. A little awkward with racking the bike, otherwise ok.

More transition practice before the next race

Started out pretty strong. I watched my lap splits with my stopwatch and was managing 7:10-7:15 for the first 5 miles. Then the pace seememd to drop to 7:20-7:30 for the rest of the race with the exception of Mile 8 on the second out and back, there was an obnoxious hill that seemed to drain me and took me 8:15 to do. I saw Jeff and Rob after each of the turn arounds, and they both looked strong. Before the last turnaround I checked my watch and calculated that Jeff had about a 4:45-5:00 lead on me, minus the 2:00 difference from going in the wave before me, I had to make up 3 minutes roughly, to catch him with 3miles to go. Very unlikely to catch him but I gave it a good effort and still only ran 7:30ish and was starting to cramp hard.

I need to work more long distance (>10miles) runs into my training plan. Consuming more endurolytes on the bike and continuing during the run would probably help too.

Found Rhonda, did some stretching, talked to Rob and Jeff for awhile. Had a burger and some water, gatorade, cookies. Did some more stretching. Dried off and got some warm dry clothes on and tried to get warm myself.


Obviously, I need to get control over my emotions at the start of the swim and not have to deal with "cannon kick". I also could take at least two minutes off my time by getting better in transition. Otherwise, I am pretty satisfied with my performance, and feel pretty good about trying to break sub-5 hours at Timberman in August.


I have heard nothing but great things about Keith Jordan and the races he puts on and this being my first race of his, I was not disappointed. I look forward to doing it again next year.