Philadelphia Triathlon in Fairmount Park - Olympic Distance - TriathlonOlympic

The first 200 or so yards were like bumper cars, but after that things really opened up. My goal was to remain calm and steady through the race, and I accomplished this for the swim.

Honestly, I need more time in the pool to get my swim times down, and I rarely put in more than 1000 yards a session. I squeeze these in during my work day, and I get bored easily with the reps. I love to do open water swimming, but have only done that once or twice this season so far. Need to work on that.

I knew that T1 was going to be slow for me going into the race, because I don't like the feel of my tri top under the speed suit. So I had planned on throwing the top on at T1 even though that would take more time do with me being soaking wet from the swim. And it did take some time. I probably could have done it 10-15 seconds faster.

Not much. My next tri will probably be a wet suit event, and I have no problem with wearing my tri top under either wet suit.

One of my glaring weaknesses has been hills on the bike. So this season, I have made every third bike session a hill session. It is still a work in progress. These hills kicked my butt today.

Work harder in hill training.

I thought I breezed through T2.

Nothing

I was using this race as a bridge to my first half iron in August, and the goal on the 10K was to keep a steady pace without pushing too hard. In training, my 10Ks were in the range of 7:25 to 7:35 pace, but my olympic distance bricks were closer to 8:00 pace which I did today.

I would have liked to have been sub 8's, but overall, that is not a bad result being that I ran steady and did not push myself very hard.

I had only a few sips of water on the bike, and not much more than that on the run, so I threw down a couple water bottles after the race. I thought the post race food was good -- had a hoagie and some cookies. Tried to stretch out and stay in the shade with my wife until the awards presentation. We hung around to see if we would win the Cervelo road bike they raffled off, but no luck!


I intentinally kept myself at a less than all out effort. This was my first Olypic distance race, and I wanted to pace myself. Next time, I will push harder.


Great organization. Loads of volunteers. Roads totally closed to traffic. Fun event.