Philadelphia Triathlon in Fairmount Park - TriathlonOlympic

What a train wreck! I really like the swim leg of this race and I've been swimming well this year, so I decided to start front and center to try and set a swim PR for this course (was shooting for ~22:00), which (I thought) would help with a race PR. Only one problem - I forgot that I'm old and can't hang at the front for very long. I blew up badly after about 10 minutes with one of my tachycardias. First time I've ever experienced one while swimming; not very pleasant. I had to latch on to a kayak twice to try and get my HR back to a survivable rate. I finally regained some composure and finished the swim. I caught back up to one of the waves that passed me, but the damage was done.



Start out easy and make a move in the second half.
Warm up before the swim.
Have wife remind me that I'm too old to start front & center (she'll enjoy this task).

I was pretty discouraged after the swim and wasn't moving very fast in T1. My wetsuit got stuck on my heels, but what really killed my T1 time was that I lost a bike shoe off the pedal running to the T1 exit and had to push my bike back to my rack, about half way across the transition area, to retrieve it.

Maybe run out of T1 with shoes on next time.

After my episode during the swim I basically just limped through the bike & run with no energy. The thing with these tachycardias is they're not life threatening, and I can continue the race, but once they happen all "racing" is over. It's like instant bonk.

Not blow up in the swim and, I say this after every race, don't put sports drink in that evil Profile Aero Drink piece of shit. I had sticky drink all over me and the bike again. It's funny how the bike course is littered with the useless yellow netting things that are supposed to keep the drink from splashing out.

Average, but uninspired, transition. By this point I just couldn't wait for the race to be over (or sweet death).

Put socks on (keep reading).

Ah, the final insult: a 1:03:07 10k.

Other than the obvious problem with my 10k time, my new sneakers, which I haven't run in bare foot before, wore a blister on the arch of each foot; and my new tri top, which I haven't worn before, wore the skin off the inside of my left arm. These little extras made my half-hearted run all the more enjoyable.



From now on I promise to follow rule #1: Nothing new or untested on race day.

While I'm very disappointed with my time, about 32 minutes off my PR for this race, I'm not too discouraged because my training's been going well and my fitness is where it needs to be. The combination of a very bad plan and bad luck did me in.

Oh well, at least I got my bad race out of the way for the year. The rest will be easy.