Devil's Challenge Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Standing in the sun with my wetsuit, shoes/socks, and a sweatshirt on as the first few waves went out, I started to think that I felt pretty warm and maybe I wouldn’t be too cold during the race. Yeah, right. A lot of people in the first few waves seemed to try to walk as far as they could before starting to swim. You could walk about ¾ of the way to the first buoy if you wanted to. I followed race director’s advice for dolphin dives to start instead of running/walking and was one of the first to the buoy. I settled in behind a guy in front of me and tried to keep going in a straight line. I think both he and I wound up doing an arc towards the middle of the lake, wasting a few strokes. After rounding the second buoy, I passed quite a few people who stood up as soon as they could. It seemed strange to be swimming by people who were running/walking. I felt pretty good for the swim and was one of the first from my wave to the bikes.

I had decided before the race to try to keep warm during the race, knowing that it would cost me in transition, and I didn’t disappoint. I dried my hair, arms, and legs and put on windproof pants, wool socks, a long sleeve jersey, a vest, gloves, and had booties over my bike shoes. I realized while running to the bike out that I hadn’t really dried my feet much before putting my socks on and that they were still wet. That wasn’t smart.

Remember to dry off my feet if it's cold out. Maybe put those chemical hand warmers in my shoes beforehand.

Holy crap those were some long hills. I thought I had done a fair amount of hill training beforehand, but realized that what I thought had been long hills in training, were actually quite short compared to this course. The first hill seemed to never end. After the first hill, I seemed to get going pretty well, but somewhere in the middle of the course, it didn’t feel like I was going very fast and it felt like my tires were starting to go flat. I looked down and my tires were fine, so it was my legs starting to go flat. I had a Hammer Gel taped to my aero bars, but looked down to eat it and it already had fallen off. Oh well. I sucked down some Gatorade and kept pushing on. As hard as the uphills were, the downhills were fun. That last hill right before the end kind of sucked, but at least I knew it was the last hill.

Find some longer hills for training. Secure gel better so I don't lose it.

I wasted some time here because I couldn’t decide what to wear on the run. My whole body was at a comfortable temperature, with the exception of my feet, which had no feeling. Do I want the vest on? Yes, No? Keep the gloves? Finally decided on just running in my tri top and sweatpants and took off.

Decide what I'm going to wear beforehand and just go with it.

I had to look down quite a few times to make sure where my feet were hitting the pavement because I couldn’t feel them at all. For about 2/3 of the run, it felt like I just had stubs at the end of my legs. About halfway through the run, I was wishing I had kept the vest on. I was worried about the run beforehand, due to my calf strain. The first two miles were somewhat painful, but I found that if I focused on using my quads/hamstrings as much as possible and not pushing off with my calves, it was manageable. About a mile into the run, I was cursing whoever wrote the description of the race part of the run on the Devil’s Challenge web site. They had described it as a fairly flat run. Maybe in comparison to the bike course, but the run was definitely not flat. After about 2 miles, I started getting feeling back in my toes and the calf pain seemed to subside, though it was probably just adrenaline. I kicked it up a notch and finished fairly strong. Was surprised to see afterwards that I’d done a 5k PR.

Not sure I'd do much differently.

Sucked wind for a while. Thanked the timing chip lady for removing my chip for me while I attempted to breathe. Stretched out and got some food.


Besides the calf injury, messing around with clothing in transition while trying to keep warm.


I'll definitely look forward to doing this race again next year. It was a fun way to end my first tri season. It figures that it's supposed to be 80 degrees today, two days after the race.