Hy-Vee Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

Great swim. Best time ever for 1500 meters including in a lap pool. Behold the power of a wet suit. Rob and I also started at the very front but on the far far left (the first buoy was on the right). This proved to be a great strategy for me as I was able to avoid a lot of chaos and still get going. I had to flip on my back once to calm myself after the first turn but I was fine after that. I need to have confidence in my swim training in future races.


Have more confidence in my swimming abilities.
Be mentally strong during the swim, especially during the early part which is when I always get uneasy.
Do more drafting off other swimmers.
Swim sligthly harder throughout since my upper body still had plenty left in it when I made it to land.

I thought this was a decent transition considering we had to make sure our wetsuits got in the garbage bag that was going to be transported to T1. I had some difficulty getting the wet suit off so in the future I think I will use some body glide or something to assist with that.


Use body glide and have more of a sense of urgency throughout the transition.

I was getting passed a lot more than I was passing, but I was doing fairly well on the bike for me until I blew two tires at the 35 km mark. I was damned if I wasn't going to finish the race so I started jogging with my bike. I would say I probably jogged for 1/2-3/4 of a mile and then a fellow triathlete stopped and gave me a spare tube since I was out. I was able to get it on and finish the bike portion although I'm fairly positive I bent my rim and I was worried about wiping out. The flat tires probably cost me 20 minutes when all was said and done.


I have to figure out why I blow so many tires. I'm going to go to my local bike store and ask for a lesson in changing tubes so I don't continue to have these problems. Also, I haven't riden as much as I would have liked to prior to this race so I hope to have more bike training specifically before this race next year.

I thought this was a very good transition. Speed laces really help and I was motivated to get out of there even faster so I can begin making up for the lost time from the bike.


Nothing.

Pretty decent run considering the disappointment off the bike. I thought this was a challenging run course since it had quite a few decent climbs and it just seemed to continue on forever.


Do more brick workouts. Push slightly harder after getting legs under me.

Visited with friends and family. Walked around and sampled the food and drinks that were being given away.


Flat tires
Not being able to train as much as I would like (I am able to put in 5 hours a week now that summer is here and that's pretty good but I would love to be in the 7-8 hour range but that's probably not possible with a career and three kids).
Confidence in my abilities since this is only my third tri still but that's improving.


A very good race overall, but when you consider everything the organizers had to deal with beforehand with changing it from a tri to a du back to a tri and changing locations, they did a great job. This is going to be a yearly event for me for the foreseeable future.