Tri the Parks - John Tanner State Park - TriathlonSprint

The swim sucked.. I thought I was going to do good but
I was wrong... i reverted back to flailing around like
a rookie not knowing how to swim in a group. Ohh, and
the waffle house i had for breakfast didn't sit too
well in the water either. I was like 13:20 coming out
of the water but then there was a 45 second run up to
the transition area.


Don't eat waffle house before a race.. not enough time to digest before the swim
Practice Open Water swimming before racing

T1 (Transition 1) was horrifying. Ok, so i have abnormally long legs... well that screwed me on
Saturday. I was unable to hang my bike by the saddle
like most normal people are able to do, so i had to
hang mine by my breaks... no big deal right? Wrong,
when i get to T1 and get all my stuff on and am ready
to take the bike off the rack I could not get it off
the rack to save my life. I finally after about 30
seconds jerked it about as hard as i could because i
was soo frustrated at this point.. and when i did..
the cause of the problem became apparent. My
aero-drink bottle and the break levers had sandwhiched
the rack to a point where it was impossible to remove
without one or the other budging. In this instance it
was the aero drink bottle.. it went fying off of my
bike and SPLATT.. there went all my drink for the ride
on the ground... at the same time I knocked the bike
over that was racked next to mine... it was a loud
crashing mess. So, at this point I had to take my
bike.. set it aside and go clean up the mess i made.
I re-racked the guys bike next to mine and in discust
picked up my aero=-drink bottle and saw nothing left
in it and just threw it down as hard as i could.. i'm
sure it all was pretty funny for the spectators. I
grabbed the 1/4 full water bottle i was drinking while
warming up and put it on my bike. Anyways, 4 minutes
and 6 seconds later I was off on the bike portion of
the race. Mind you, the best people do their
transitions in 35 to 40 seconds and an average T1 time
would be something like 1:20 seconds or so (so i gave
up a good 2:40 secs just in the transition area)..
Yeah, I'm an idiot!! A guy at the end of the race
told me that he used to have the same problem cause he
was a taller guy.. he suggested i get one of those
bottle rocket holders for the seat of the bike.. then
i could hang my bike by that and would not have to
worry about this happening again.. i think i will take
his advice.



get a bottle rocket holder to hold my bike on the rack

My saving grace for this race.. I really had a good
ride. When I did this race in '03 i think it took me
closer to 37 minutes to complete the 11.2 mile course
but Saturday I finished it in 32:01. It was the
strongest I ever felt in a race.. only one person
passed me and it was a 41 year old with an aerodynamic
helmet and all that (and it was when we were going
uphill).. My average speed was 21mph for the bike
course but it felt like 25mph.
I really had fun out on the bike. The only problem
was that I only had the 1/4 bottle of water to drink
during the ride because it was all over the ground in
the transition area.. i don't think this affected my
bike ride but it may have affected my run because i
wasn't very hydrated for the run.
I looked back at the '06 results and my bike time was
only 30 seconds slower than Carol Sharpless's bike
time for the same course - the overall winner for
women (and anyone who know's Carol know's she can
really kill the bike), so I am proud of being that
close to her.


Hmhh, this is tough... maybe go even harder cause i had alot left at the end.. felt like i was just getting started

Decent transition

The run went ok.. I took off in 6:30 for first mile
and soon after hit a wall of some sorts.. I really
bonked in mile two.. i came through mile two in 14:10
so my second mile was in 7:40.. I really felt like
walking cause i was soo drained (hopefully cause of
not re-hydrating during the bike)..
I managed to pick it back up for the last mile and
covered the last 1.1 mile in 6:48 so my last mile was
probably in 6:15 or something like that. My 5K time
was 20:58.


hydrate better on bike.. push harder during second mile
get to a point where i can where racing flats instead of my normal training shoes

nothing


mistakes


My overall time was 1:12:23.7
I did this race in 1:11:36 in 2003. I really wanted to
beat that time at least, but my first transtion
screwed that up... had i not had such a horrible time
and had just an average transition I would have broken
the 1:10:00 barrier.. so in all i feel ok about how i
did.