Wildman Triathlon Festival - Sprint Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

WOW! I spent a lot of time training for the swim but nothing can prepare you for the chaos of the real thing. The best way I can think of to describe it is simply survival. I say this not because of my swimming ability but because of all the other bodies who may or may not have any idea of what they are doing. my first problem was when they made the announcement for racers to head to the beach I left the back of the car with my snorkel, goggles and nose plug in hand. within 20 feet I had lost the nose plug. I can't swim without it so this was bad. nothing I could do but run off to the beach for a pre-race meeting and hope that my wife could find it. after the meeting I sprinted back to the car and my wife had saved the day so crises avoided. I had decided prior to start in the back and to the side since I used a snorkel and I couldn't afford to get it kicked off. the problem was that I turned out to be faster than most of the others and next thing you know I was in the middle of the pack. I wasted a lot of energy sighting and trying to find a clear path past them. of cuourse my goggles got totaly fogged up so that didn't help. At one point I was swimming quit well and not bumping anyone then I looked up to find myself about 50 feet off course. despite all that the first 200 went by quickly. after rounding the marker the return trip seemd to take forever because now I was paranoid about staying on course and probably sighted too much. regardless, I finished and decided to walk about half of the 200 yards or so to transition to give myself time to settle down. Now that I've seen my times I was shocked to see that only 4 men out of 79 posted a better swim time than me. So overall I'm very happy with my performance but still feel the swim is my weekest event.

pretty easy to say that starting in the back isn't a good idea. If I can start in the front and have a chance to get into my swimming zone with even a little room around me I think I can post some very good times. of course there will be people faster than me but they are more than welcome to pass me and this way it's them who have to find a route around. very glad that I had the snorkel because the people who seemed to struggle the most appeared to be having trouble breathing.

not sure why my T1 time seemed to be about 30 seconds slower than others, this is something I need to look at. I felt good and mostly recovered. Didn't have any trouble getting the suit off. maybe a little trouble putting the shirt on since I don't have a race belt and my number was pinned to the back....I suppose this could have cost me 30 seconds but I'm not sure. Didn't have the shoes on the peddals (nor did anyone else) because there was about a 50 yard run out of trasition through a lot of sand and mud and nobody wanted to put sandy muddy socks in their bike shoes. So I ran out with the shoes on and mounted on the pavement.

get a race belt.

not sure about my ranking because not eveybody's bike numbers show up but I seem to be about 4-5 minutes too slow. the bike portion went well but not great. I feel that I can save myself those 4-5 minutes by being better trained (those that passed me seemed to be at slower rpm's but if I up shifted it was too hard to maintain speed) and upgrading some equipment on my bike. I did more passing of others than getting passed and those that passed me all seemed to riding bikes in the $3-5k range so I didn't feel too bad. Also everybody who passed me had aero bars so this is my next purchase

I've been training at 14 miles which seemed to make sense to get me used to a sprint distance. I think though that I should get those miles out around 20 leading up to a race so that the shorter sprint distance will seem easier than training. Not sure if my thinking is correct here or not so I'll do some research and speak to my mentor about it.

not sure about my time in T2 because the result didn't post them separately from the bike portion =(. didn't remove my feet from the shoes again because of the muddy trasition area and I didn't want to run without socks. I was feeling some tightness in my inner thighs so I did as planned and took my time. no problem getting shoes off and on though I will definately get some zip ties for my next race, no reason to lose time tying laces. spent about 60 second stretching my thighs and quads and headed out.

get faster shoe laces and be more aware of which side of the rack I will be arriving on....I racked my bike then realized all my stuff was on the other side so I had to duck under it. no big deal.

very surprised to see my pace in this portion. in training I am a very consistant 9.5 to 10 minute a mile runner so to see that I ran just under 9 minutes is awsome. can't really explain it other than the thrill of my first race and that I really didn't feel fatigued at this point. I don't think anyone passed me during the run so that was nice and the tempurature was almost perfect.

can't think of anything to change here

lots of water and walking around. feeling a huge buzz from the endorphines. huge show of support from my wife who managed to be all over the place....I saw her coming out of the water, coming out of T1, didn't see her coming into T2 but she was there, there coming out of T2 and of course jumping up and down at the finish line. She was huge for me =D


Poor planning to start the swim but easy to improve. Not enough training on the bike. I thought it would be easy and it was, but easy isn't fast. I have no problem completing the segment but I need to get faster.


To say the least I'm more hooked on tri's than I was before. what an incredible feeling it was crossing the finish line, I want that feeling over and over again.