Lone Star Triathlon Festival - Sprint - TriathlonSprint

Given that this was my first triathlon with OWS, my strategy was to just keep an easy steady pace, not allowing my heartrate or breathing get out of control.

I started at the front-middle of the wave, not so much because I wanted to, but because nobody else seemed to want to be there. I just tried to keep a steady pace. While there were a 100 or so people in the wave, I didn't experience the washing machine effect. I tried drafting a couple of time, but it was faster just to pass them...

The nice surprise was that I didn't have any problems with sighting, which I hadn't practiced enough. My last couple of OWS practices I didnt go very straight... This time I did take a forward look fairly frequently, using toward a large boat as a guide. I think my new, better fitting wetsuit, made this easier.

I was very pleased with the swim, which I'm sure was over the 480M as published.



Unzip the wetsuit between warmup and wave start. My chest started feeling a bit tight which worried me.

This race had wetsuit strippers. Nice!

Unfortunately, when I got to my bike I saw that someone had knocked my left shoe off the pedal (maybe they had knocked over the bike?), and broke the rubber band that held it in position. So I ended up running out of transition with the right shoe clipped in and positioned correctly, and the left shoe in my hand! After leaving the trasition area, I leaned the bike against a support, put on my shoe, then took off on the bike. My time lost here cost me one place in my AG. I was 5th of 31 in this transition, but the greater time lost was actually just outside of transition and is reflected in the bike time.

Not sure how to avoid this problem.

I passed more people than I got passed by, which is a huge improvement from my first triathlon. I kept the cadence between 95 and 100 most of the way, which felt comfortable. I thought maybe I could get more speed at a lower cadence, but was worried about how it would affect the run (which is where I have the most trouble).

There was a light wind, but I don't worry about things like this which affect everyone equally. I just stayed in aeroposition whole ride and pedaled!

Ate a GU after the half-way turnaround.

Maybe go faster. In retrospect, I think I didn't push myself hard enough.

Got off the bike running, and all seemed good. 5th of 31 in T2.

Not much. I felt good about this one.

I had a stomach cramp from the get go, which never went away. I'm not sure of the cause. My legs felt fatigued the first half mile or so, but seemed to get better afterwards. I kept a slow, steady pace (or so I thought) and picked up the pace a bit the last mile or so.

I'm a pretty slow runner to start, and figured I was running at about a 10 min/mile pace. My breathing was somewhat hard, and at first I was concentrating on taking it easy enough so I could finish without walking. I was very surprised to see that I was at almost an 8 min/mile pace, which is fast for me!


I need to figure out what causes these stomach cramps. I don't get them when I workout, but seem to get them on the run in races.

None.


I was actually quite pleased and pleasantly surprised with my results! In my first tri about six months ago I was 24 of 27 in my AG, and 160 of 220 overall. Today was my second tri, and showed huge improvement!

I thought this was a well organized, professionally run race. Unfortunately heavy rain made the post race stuff fairly miserable, but I guess you can't control the weather!