Tri for Fun Sprint Triathlon #2 - TriathlonSprint

For me, this was a great swim. Swimming has been my weak spot in training and I've got pretty much no background in it. 18 minutes was my 'fast' goal, the one that I didn't think I'd make.

I did have trouble sighting on the second buoy. There was some glare from the sun, and my goggles fogged up just a little. There were enough swimmers in the water to keep me close though.

Sighting/more training in open water

Again, this is good...for me. I finished the swim strong enough to run up the hill at a good clip. Didn't have too much trouble getting out of the suit either. I learned from my prior race and tweaked my setup, that and I got some new stuff like a tri-top and a race-belt.

Here's where things started to go wrong.

I was just slow. I'm not sure what it was exactly. The course was a lot of rolling hills which isn't exactly what I train on. Also, I haven't really trained that long on the new tri-bike. Really I just need to train more.

I'm not putting cytomax in the water bottle anymore, or at least that mixture. The sweetness was killing me. I've got to experiment and work out which is the best for me.

I got out of my shoes on the bike, which went well...aside from the fact that I got a little mixed up and dismounted about 30ft sooner than I should. :) There was a big crowd lining the dismount area and I just lost track of where the actual end was. I was told later that several people did that.

The tri-top and quick laces helped a lot here.

Dismount in the actual dismount area.

This was awful.

I just got my legs settled from the bike, about 1/4 of a mile in, when I got some big nasty side ache issues. Belly breathing, arms up, nothing touched these beasts. They lasted up until the half way point. When I finally burned through them I as able to get up to a decent pace.

I had my side ache problem pretty well managed during training, but evidently not at this distance. More bricks and longer durations and experimentation on drinks/food.

Really well organized. Only thing was the speedbumps on the bike course. Those weren't fun.