Boulder Peak Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

No doubt about it, I'm a sucky swimmer. But at least I suck less this year than I did last year. Last year I was a sucky panicky swimmer who couldn't swim 800m freestyle. This year I can swim freestyle the whole way and I freak out less in open water.

This was a good swim for me, though. Well, other than the first 200m. I still don't deal well with being in a pack of swimmers so I seeded myself at the very back. Evan so I had a bad fisrt 200m (or whatever the distance to the first buoy was). Couldn't find a rhythm, wondered if I should just quit then and there, etc. Ended up just stopping just short of the first buoy to collect myself mentally. Then started up again and things went much better. I sighted pretty well (remembered to find landmarks to line the buoys up with), I did find and stay with a rhythm and didn't have any more panicky freak out moments.

(Time includes about 1 min from exiting the water to entering the transition area).

I can't think of anything that I could have done differently on race day. I think I swam pretty close to the limits of my current abilities.

But for the future: Swim more. Suck less.

Felt pretty fatiqued coming out of the water. The one advantage of being a slow swimmer is that I never have problems finding my bike! Got my wetsuit off okay on my right leg, but it got stuck on my left heel. Finally got it off, but ended up pulling the timing chip off with it. Fumbled around putting it back on. Everything else was fine.

Double check the fastener on the timing chip. Learn the shoes on the bike trick, and jumping on the bike.

I was a little slower than I had hoped for on this. I felt like I was slower on Old Stage than I was when I did it about 10 days ago in training. I did pass a lot of people (another advantage of being slow on the swim), and it was great to have all of the spectators and the people in costume. I'm still not as comfortable as I would like to be doing long descents on my tri bike, so I was really conservative coming down off Old Stage and on Left Hand Canyon and was passed by a number of people here. Felt pretty good once we turned onto Nelson Road and felt that I rode better on 63rd than I did in training rides.

As far as on the day of, nothing. Again I felt I raced pretty close to my current abilities.

I need to learn to drink regularly on the bike.

Okay here, nothing really notable. Didn'y really try to push it. Used a few extra seconds to collect myself for the run (and not forget things like my race belt like I did in the Sprint).

Nothing

This was brutal because of heat and being on such an exposed course. Felt okay uut of T2 and ran pretty consistently throughout. Walked for 30-45s at all of the aid stations, getting both gatorade and water. Used part of the water to dilute the gatorade, poured the rest over my head. Tried to drink the water a couple of times to get the sweet gatorade taste out of my mouth, but it was too warm. Struggled between mile 2 and the trun around. Felt pretty good after the turn-around, and started to push it a little harder at mile 5. This was probably a bit too soon as I felt like I was fading a lot in the last half mile or so. Was feeling kind of dizzy and had ringing in my ears tha last 1/4 mile, so I was pretty close to my limits here.

I think I'll bring a hand held bottle in future races. I find full strength gatorade to be entirely too sweet to stomach well, especially in the heat.

The cold towel at the end was great. Found some shade drank water and diluted gatorade until I felt okay enough to eat something.

Watched the pro men leave on the run and then the top pros finish. Hung around for the awards (I like watching the older age groups get their awards. I hope I'm in as good shape when I'm older!)


1)The heat.
2) Lack of training. Overtime at work and small nagging injuries (one in each foot) have limited the amount of training I've been able to do in the last 6-8 months.




Well organized as usual. One problem that I saw was at the aid stations on the run. It was great to have them every mile, but they seemed more chaotic than usual. Some of them had water on one side and gatorade on the other, so if you wanted both you had to cross to the other side of the course. This caused some traffic flow problems.

They also have some problems getting consistently sized t-shirts. I'm okay with the design, but my medium shirt would be small on the average 12 year old boy. I wear between a small and medium shirt typically, but this shirt is smaller than my smallest wicking t-shirt. The shirts from last year's Sprint race were similarly problematic.