Danskin Women's Triathlon - Chicagoland (Pleasant - TriathlonSprint

Water was rough, I had never swam with that many people, so I kept grabbing people's legs and being grabbed. I never could catch a good rhythm, and ended up backstroking/breaststroking way more than I wanted to. Got off course a bit too because of the backstroking. I did manage to stay swimming until my hand touched the bottom of the lake, so that was good. The sand up to T1 was deep and steep, so it was hard to get to my bike with any speed.

Danskin's swim is neat because weak swimmers can request "swim angels" to swim with them. The angels have those fun-noodle floaty things with them so the weak swimmers can take breaks. Unfortunately, I saw a racer using one to help her actually swim. That frustrated me because that's against USAT rules.

practice, practice, practice. I just need to get more open water practice, and do more tri's to get used to lots of people.

I thought about hooking my shoes to my bike, but didn't. My HR was really high from the swim, so I walked my bike and grabbed water and sucked down a Gu.

Not much I could have changed. I used a bucket to rinse my feet and had a bucket to sit on, so that helped cut down my transition time.

First 8 miles wasn't too bad with the wind because the course wasn't hilly at the windy points. Last 4 miles was brutal. The wind plus the hills made it so I had to pedal downhill. I would have been more amused by biking past the Jelly Belly Factory had I not been working my tail off at the end of the bike.

On a different note, I was frustrated by someone wearing headphones, and people riding 3-4 wide on the road. It made it very difficult to pass people sometimes.

I want to try clipping my shoes onto the bike next time and seeing how that works. Everything else was out of my control.

Good transition except for kicking my water pan and soaking my shoes :-P

practice getting off the bike while in motion. I'm afraid to do it with my cycling shoes

I walked most of it. It was just too hot and I wanted to see what my pace would be if I mostly walked. My last tri I tried to run, but I thought that my walking was so much slower after running. Since I was walking, I was cheering other people on and ended up getting dubbed "the cheerleader" by one woman, and was told that I was "so cute" by another (that was by someone running past me when I was actually running). They had a hose to spray down the athletes, plus a fire hydrant opened up. That was sweet :-)

More run training is really the only thing that could have helped my numbers, but I'm fine with how I did. I did run the last .2 miles and the photographer didn't catch me walking!

walked around to straighten up transition, then walked back to cheer on my friend Beki


Heat, wind, and not enough training.


No post-race activities, which was a bit of a let down. If you were in one of the earlier heats and a pretty quick triathlete, you could hit up some of the booths that were at the pre-race expo on Saturday (the race was Sunday), but it was hard to find much open if you got done after 10am.