Pasadena Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

I had expended all my energy on the bike, had very little left for the swim, tried to go fast to get it over with, and bonked. No idea what my split was.

Swimming at the end just sucks. I guess I need to be in better condition to do it, although I could have slowed down and probably wouldn't have hit the wall.

I went from 187 to 148, passing 39 people, on the bike. It's becoming clear to me, after my third tri, that the bike is probably my strongest leg. According to the calculator I averaged about 16.5 mph, but during the actual full-on race portion I was going faster than that. Anyway, I kicked a_ss on the bike, to the tune of 39 a_sses.

There were slow downs due to two things: 1) they let peds onto the race course during the race. I assume it was to make the relatively flat course a little more difficult for those of us who like a challenge.

It was my third lap so I assume they only had the course blocked off for 45 or 50 minutes, then they had to let traffic flow. This was dangerous and frustrating, by which of course I mean fun! 2) I don't know what you have to do to get someone to understand what "LEFT!" or "ON YOUR LEFT" or "LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, ON YOUR MOTHERF_UCKING LEFT!" means. I didn't actually scream motherf_ucking on the course, just really, really loud inside my brain. On the last straightaway I just went all the way over to the right and tore a_ss down the side of the road because few seemed interested in getting out of my way after the leaders went through. I'm apparently not intimidating enough. So I thought of a solution:

Dual machine guns mounted on the aero bars. You woudldn't need 50s or anything crazy high caliber to get this done, twin 9mm submachine guns with the triggers rigged up next to the brake/shift levers would do the trick. A couple quick blasts and that fat-tire Schwinn would drop like a prom dress. I'm working on this. I think I can get a dual sponsorship from Cinelli and Smith & Wesson.

This race started with the run, and it took me a minute or two to get around a few people and into my area of the pack. I was 187 out of 550 runners, so not too bad. My run split was 27:19, and that was with the extra few hundred meters to the transition, and the transition itself. I run this course a lot, and on my watch, when I passed the 3.1 mile mark I was at 23:30 or so, under 8 minutes a mile, which was my goal. This was by far my fastest 5k in a race.

Ran pretty good, hard to criticize. Maybe run behind sexier women or something like that.

Drank my chocolate milk and felt great. That study is correct, chocolate milk is a great recovery drink, and unlike Accelerade or those other drinks, it doesn't taste like someone just washed Jesus' feet in it.


Not starting triathlon 25 years ago.


This was a great fun race that I'll never get proper age group credit for because they fu_cked up my swim split and I have no overall time. I was probably somewhere in the top third of my AG, I was 139 out of 550 going into the swim, which is right at the top 25 percent, so with my janky swim I probaly ended up at least in the top third of finishers, but I'll never f-ucking know. You can probably discern from my attitude in this report that I'm relatively p-issed off that I had my best tri so far and have nothing to show for it except my own claims.

One thing that was great was that my wife said "I'm proud of your finish, you died in the pool because you gave your absolute all, you didn't hold anything back, and that's how you're supposed to compete." That made me feel good. So to the a-sshole timers I say that usually when someone gives it to me the hard way they buy me dinner, but I'll get over it, and my goal is to come back next year and finish under an hour.