North Mankato Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

The swim went very farily good. I decided at the last minute to wear my wetsuit which I was very happy I did after reviewing my performance post race. It helped my confidence as I was out in my first triathlon with a lake swim. The only thing that threw me off was how much people would be swimming right next to you and slapping my legs/swimming into me. Once I saw later that I came out of the water in the top 20 for my wave I was very excited. I was able to swim straight for the majority but caught myself zig-zagging at one time. Overall I can't be more happy with my first triathlon swim in a lake.

Just work on my navigation a little more just so I wouldn't have got off track the one time I really noticed it. The experience I gained from this one will hopefully help me a ton going into my next one.

1:01 and I had a wetsuit on!!!! Woohoo!! When I decided to wear my wetsuit at the last minute I was very concerned about having to take it off quickly since I've never practiced that before. Everything went great and as soon as I got onto the bike route I finally realized how well it went and made me think about that instead of the huge hill that laid in my path :)

Nothing!!!

This part of the race went very well. The hill about mile 2 was tough but I managed to get up and felt it at the top but got right back to it and felt good througout the rest of the race. My bike had the course at 13.70 miles which would put my pace above my goal of 20 mph but with that huge hill I'm still happy.

Push it even more on the flats.

So this is when all the fun begins. As I got back to my transition spot everything was going great and had my bike shoes off and helmet off and went ready to put my shoes on and bam!! I put them on and then went to tighten my Yankz laces and I had the adrenaline going a little too much. I managed to pull my laces right out of my left shoe. On my right shoe half of the laces came out, but it was still very loose.

Not pull my laces out of my shoes :)

So with my shoes loose I take off running and get more worried about my shoes being loose rather than having to run 4 miles. With every step I'm not sure if my feet are going to slip out or not. Once I got off of the trail my mind decided that they wanted to ditch the shoes and just run barefoot but the other half was telling me not to. When I got between the 1.5 mile mark and the 2 mile mark I came up to a corner where there was some volunteers and decided to just ditch the shoes. I told the lady to hold them for me and I'd be back later for them and she just chuckled and agreed to hold them. Oh yeah I didn't wear socks today either :) As I ran the following streets I could finally worry about running and not about my shoes. As I would pass spectators or fellow runners would pass me I would hear comments but I wasn't going to stop. In triathlons there are no re-do's and I couldn't stop the clock to fix my shoes so I just had to keep running and finish. Through the last part of the race though my feet didn't hurt so I just kept going and going. When I made the last corner and had about 300 meters to go, it was balls the walls time. I gave it all coming in to the chute and the tons of spectators noticed I didn't have my shoes on anymore. Overall, with no shoes I couldn't be any happier.

Have laces to keep my shoes on :)

Just stood around and watched the fellow competitors finish and then returned to pick up my shoes.


Shoes in the run!!


Started 15 minutes late due to on-site registration. All the volunteers that I talked to were awesome and more than happy to help if you needed something.