Wildman Triathlon Festival - Olympic Aquabike - Aquabike

I learned some very important lessons for SA. I've been quite proud of myself for being so clever and using a scuba wetsuit for triathlons. Figuring that I only do a race or two in cold water, and since I'm usually in the BOP anyways, why spend a small fortune on an over-priced, less thermally sound, no good for diving wetsuit. At SA last year, my mile time was about 65 min (of course, this was in 5' seas) and I was OK with that in a 3/2 wetsuit. But the 5mm today really slowed me down a LOT. Sure, some of that is that I haven't swam since October...but even without any training I can usually beat a few others in the swim, I was DFL by about 5-10 min today. Usually, the swim is my best event...and I finish middle of the pack.

I'm going to have to suck it up and buy a tri suit. Also, I guess my new goggle don't have anti-fog. This was an issue too. Considering, I am pleased with my time. It's only 10 min slower than my OWS in salt water with no wetsuit when I was training.

I was thrilled when I saw someone in transition!! Actually, I had feared he might have returned from the bike already, and I was that far behind! But he said he had just finished the swim and it was my goal to get out of there before him! He beat me by about 30 seconds, but I figured I could catch him on the bike...a mission!!

The one part that sucked was a race official made a smart remark about "not taking our sweet time" as the bike course closes at 9:30. This was a pretty hurtful thing to say...especially the way he said it. This was also a complete suprise to me as none of the information about the race said ANYTHING about course time limits. I know for certain, as I religiously study that information to decide whether or not to do a race. I know I am slow and I want to compete and stretch myself by participating in difficult challenges. At the same time, I don't want to hold everyone else up by taking MUCH longer than the other athletes. The major reason why I registered for the Aquabike. I knew I could do the 2 events and finish in a reasonable time. If there was a designated time for the course to close, it should have been published. Other than this random person saying that, overall, the Buttar folks were TOTALLY Athena-freindly, and I recommend a race like this one to anyone wanting to "try out" the longer distance Oly.

T1 went pretty well.

As I got out of transition with my bike, I clip in and realize my chain has fallen off! Really fallen off and gotten itself stuck behind the "keep your chain from getting stuck" thing. It took about 10 min or so to pry this out. The guy I was supposed to try and catch was long, long gone.

I should have rode the bike around for a few min before the race. Since buying the truck, I'm putting the bike in the bed rather than hanging on a rack and this seems to happen more often when stored flat like that.

Got some breakfast, met MAC from BT, got my first ever plaque..for overall female winner on the Aquabike. (No matter that I was the ONLY female!)


I probably need to really learn how to sustain a freestyle stroke for that distance, get a tri wetsuit, de-fog my goggles, check my chain. Not much!

Oh yeah, losing another 80 lbs would help too!


The Buttar folks did an AWESOME job! This was the best organized small race I've been to so far. AND it was awesome to get a finsiher's medal, and an award....the breakfast was great. The race had a lot of the big race perks. I am going to do A LOT more Buttar events and encourage my family to participate too.