Lone Star Triathlon Festival - Sprint - TriathlonSprint

First time wearing a wetsuit in SALT water - SOOOPerMAAAAAN! With all the buoyancy I get from body fat anyway, I had no idea that the wetsuit + salt combo would make such a difference. Felt like flying. Well, until my lungs gave out at about 100meters. Oopsie. Didn't train for flying. Didn't actually "train," to speak of. Okay. So, I slowed down and took it slow and steady-ish for the last 400.

One error: I'd been told to turn at the boat, and was sighting off of the boat... failing to notice the buoy to the RIGHT of the boat we needed to round before the left turn. A surfboard volunteer set me straight, but it wasted time.

Who cares? Fun swim. :)

Know something about the course before I get in the water. Maybe by, um, listening to the pre-race instructions instead of relying on other people to explain them to me?

They had high schoolers stripping wetsuits, which was too bad. Would so have preferred a nice strong grown-up with more experience.

Took too long to get into my shoes - see below. Other than that, this seemed faster... why so slow? Maybe the long run from the water.

Undo the velcro on my shoes before the race!

The "out" was with tailwind, the "back" with headwind and some icy gusts of approaching storm fury.

Shortly into this ride, after the 27th "ON YOUR LEFT!" passing me, I realized that looking at my speed wasn't going to help me. I switched my computer to show only Cadence and Distance Traveled - perfect. Just kept my cadence and effort level steady for the rest of the ride and felt great.

This paid off on the way back. Focused only on cadence and effort level, I didn't lose a beat to discouragement at the headwind. Really, it was no big deal. Some guy was complaining about it when he passed me. Cadence and effort level were good, we had gone 6.7 miles, sad to be him! I improved my position on the way back, being passed by fewer people and passing some -- maybe a few who had tuckered themselves out getting high on their speed on the way out. :) I only put in a "kick" when passing, other than that kept it pretty steady effort the whole way.

Time was slow 'cause of lack of fitness, but I was pleased with how I raced. Ate one Gu early in the ride.

During the last two miles the steady winds were joined by a few sporadic gusts that felt like someone had opened the freezer... hmmm....

Not much, other than train. And practice drinking. Managing my bottle still slows me down too much.

My T2 time and run time got collapsed into one number - 36:36.30. I'm arbitrarily saying it was 3:00 for this transtiion and 33:36 for the run, but don't really know.

Included more shoe stupidity and a long-ish portapotty stop. Downed one Enduralyte.

UNTIE SHOELACES BEFORE THE RACE! D'oh. What a waste. Or get speedlaces.

Oh, and, if the clouds have turned the color of charcoal, I could leave my sunglasses in T2 next time.

As soon as I stepped out of T2, the rain broke. With thunder rumbling overhead, we ran through pouring pelting pooling rushing washing splashing soaking rain. Some of it may have been hail. Absolutely spectacular. Running in the rain elates me. We were ankle-deep at times. It was gorgeous.

I had no idea where I was - my mind concluded, "I will run where these people point me, until I cross a finish line and they tell me I am done. If they pull me off the course in a flash flood, I will stop. Other than that, I will run. Run run run run run."

Unfortunately, with no accurate T2/run split, I don't really know my exact pace. If my guess is right, this was very good, especially considering the water on the roads.

I wish I had words to convey the joy of this run experience.

Run a little faster. :) Why not?

OVERALL, I'm super pleased with my race and my result. My goal for this year is simply to get into the "Top 90%" - I say it that way in part because I like laughing at myself. But really, it's breaking out of the consistent bottom 10%... and here, I was 82% of the way back -- that's solid BOP, not BOBOP (Back of the back of the pack, or even "behind" it!) as before. There are some people who would hold in disdain my sense of achievement at this accomplishment... but none of them read this far, so thank you! :) Part of it is from doing an easier race - a real sprint, instead of a super-sprint or Oly - and part is also improving my running a bit these last few months.

Next up... the bike! Gotta make it happen. The fun of this race was a good motivator/reminder.

I got very disoriented during the run & everything afterwards seemed surreal too.

Long story short, I never figured out that everyone was in the big tent, so I just talked for a few minutes with a couple of non-BT friends who were at the medical tent (one was trying to get warm, the others were just huddled there out of the rain) then went to get my stuff from transition.

At transition, many of us discovered that we had drowned our phones. Also , people's helmets and wetsuits and flipflops and such had floated around and been rescued by the bike support people. My stuff was all there, but my phone had drowned. So, not knowing where anyone was and thinking it a good idea to get out of the rain now, I went to the car and drove back to the BT Beach House for a HOT shower, dry clothes, food, coffee, and food. Did I mention food?

Fantastic day. Everything. I loved it.



1. Not training.
2. Holding back a little in each area, but especially the run (due in part to fear of slipping in the water.)
3. Fumbled transitions, shoes not ready in particular.


Keith and the Endurofun folks did a fantastic job with the inaugural run of this event: great course, good support, quality schwag (very nice long-sleeved tech shirt, finisher's race towel and water bottle, sponsor logo towel, sponsor nutrition samples), preliminary results posted on the net the SAME DAY. Committed volunteers stayed out there through the rain. The only criticism is that the run course was so twisting and turning that it was not always 100% clear which way to go, even with many volunteers stationed around directing. The crazy rain did not help with that of course. And, I didn't see any mile markers on the run, so I don't know if there were any. (They could have blown/floated away, or I could have missed them in the gale.)