Danskin Women's Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

I felt a lot more confident going into my second OWS. I did more freestyle than backstroke this time and passed a few people. I started out at the back where I was most comfortable, and after getting through the start I was able to get into a decent groove. The first OWS experience, I drifted off quite a bit and spent a lot of time navigating back. This time, I stayed right on course. Although, I felt good during the swim I am a little disappointed with my time since it took me 20 minutes to complete 750 meters at the Boulder Stroke & Stride.

Swim more and work on some additional strokes.

The transition went well at the beginning and then I couldn't find my other glove. It had blown off my handlebar. I spent at least a minute looking for it. I was about to scrap looking for it at all, but I hurt my palm a week ago (fell during a backpacking trip) so the extra padding was really needed. I finally found it and was off. As I was running towards the start, a bunch of riders were coming in so I had to wait for them to pass.

Not put my gloves on my handlebars. I'll just lay them out on my towel next time.

At the beginning of the bike, my chain fell off the front. This had happened during training so I knew how to recover from it. I was able to continue peddling while I geared down to get the chain to slide back on.

I need to figure out how to rack my bike without having to adjust my seat. Perhaps I should have just racked it by the handlebars? Anyway, mid-way through the bike I felt like I wasn't getting a good rotation and I look down and sure enough, my seat was all the way down! So, I had to stop to adjust my seat and tighten it down. I killed at least 2 minutes doing that and I stopped at the bottom of a hill so getting up that hill was pretty challenging.

The bike didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. I definitely need to bike a lot more outside. There are some killer hills by my house and I think riding those hills is the only way I am going to learn how to change gears more smoothly and condition myself for similar courses.

A much quicker transition - all I needed to do was rack my bike, take off my helmet and put my race belt on. I took a drink of gatorade before heading to the start.

Just make it quicker.

I was pretty wiped out going in to the run and walked a lot! I was pretty disapointed with my performance since running is my strongest event. I usually can push through and I was hoping for 10 minute miles. My bike performance took a lot out of me and I think my confidence wavered a little.

Run more and not let that nagging voice of pessimism get to me.

Grabbed a banana and a water and sat down with my family.


Self doubt and a tough bike.


The traffic and parking situation was really frustrating. A lot of the women that I talked to who had done this race before had said that it has always been a pain since they moved the race from Cherry Creek to Aurora 4 years ago. They also mentioned that every year since they moved the event, the changes they make to combat previous years' troubles seem to create new problems. I don't know if I am going to do this race next year - it took me 2 hours to get out of there! They stopped the shuttle buses way too early. My family waited in traffic for a long time and when they finally parked, the shuttles stopped so they had to walk about a mile to the race. They didn't complain about that, but they said that many racers were running to get to the event and were all in a panic that they were going to miss their wave. The race coordinators should consider changing the bike course so they can keep the lanes open for traffic. It was a nightmare.

Despite the parking and traffic woes, it was a truly inspiring race. Throughout the whole thing, women were high fiving eachother and giving encouraging words. The positive energy was definitely flowing and the cause is a really great reason to hose an event like this.