Troika Half Iron Triathlon - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

Start was good and first 200 was good. After that I could just not find the rythym. May have something to do with I have only swam about 6 times since IMCDA on 6/24. Swim was slow for me and seemed long. I saw several folks cut one bouy, but that is their problem not mine.

Actually train.

This was comical as I fell down 2x trying to get my wetsuit off my heels. Nothing was going to go right for me today and I could tell already!! Got the rest of the transition pretty good, cept had to stuff wetsuit and stuff into numbered garbage bag so they could bring it to finish.

Not fall down.

Felt good going out of transition and soon started passing more folks than were passing me. Caught a buddy of mine who is peaking right now for IMC and I have not ridden more than 40 miles since IMCDA. At mile 29 I had my first flat ever while on my tri bike. It was a total blow out, not a slow leak! Got tire off and noticed the bead on the tire(front) was frayed, so tube probably poked out a bit and boom. My buddy soon passed me as I fixed the problem. Had to put a patch on the frayed part and hope it held. It held, but the tire had less than 100 miles on it so LBS replaced for me. I noticed when I distmouned for T2 that tire was bulging out again in same spot, so I was lucky. There were downhills where I was over 45MPH after the flat!!

In addition to that flat mishap, I dropped some food, managed to drop a couple of ecaps and squirted HEED over my head because I thought it was water!! Total dork!

I was 2:55 with probably 10-15 minutes of fixing the flat, so I was pretty happy with bike.

Not get a flat!

Very cool way to do transition. A volunteer takes your bike and you put helmet, shoes in bag they have and then they take your bike. Another volunteer hands you the T2 bag and off you go.

If you do not have a fast T2 in this race something is wrong with you.

This is where the day really fell apart. I told my buddy on the drive over that the run was going to hurt since I had not run since IMCDA and my MRI results showed a bulging disc in my back. I did "run" six miles last week with my bro, but we were moving so slow I did really consider it running. At the first aid station (1 mile) I stopped for some water an ecaps, then could not get running again over the bridge. Found my stride on the other side of the bridge, but left calf started to kill so altered my gait a bit to help. Bad idea. Right knee started to hurt and I began thinking time to quit. I have never quit in my life, but nothing was going right!! It started to be more walking than running and no energy. Usually I can make myself run, but no today. At the turn around I saw one buddy and he asked if I was okay!!! That alone told me I was not good. New plan was to run 4 min, walk2 and so on. That fell apart too. Nothing tasted good, felt bloated, legs were hurting and left hammie was screaming.

Anyway, gutted it out, finished with the kiddos running in with me and went home.

This was a humbling experience. I did not take it seriously and was fine (relatively speaking) until the run. I should have been 35 minutes faster, but body said no.

Lack of run training since IMCDA.


This is a fun local race. Not a ton of support, but fun. Only 2 aid stations on the bike, but aid stations every mile of the run. The point to point race is fun, but next time I would cooridinate with buddies to have a vehicle to take us to the start instead of the bus.