Papillion Mayor's Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

The swim is still my weak event, although I felt somewhat stronger this year. My navigation was a bit off to the first buoy. I got a little far left and had to veer back over to round the buoys. I swam pretty strong around the buoys and kind of got away from some people coming back in, including the lady doing the backstroke who I somehow couldn't get away from in the first half.

Do a few days of open water swimming to improve my sighting. Did this last year and it helped me out a lot.

T1 went okay. I wasn't really thinking and ended up heading out on the bike with my race number in the front which kind of sucked later. (see bike)

Not much. I had my bike in a good gear to get out, maybe I could have gotten on and gotten out a little faster.

Ummm, yeah. Earlier this week I said something in my training log about winging it on the bike. This is what happens when you only get a couple days on the bike over the course of the summer. I lost a lot of time here compared to last year. AND what really sucks is that in the rankings this was still my strongest event. Definitely some incentive to get a lot more TITS in the future. I've got four weeks until the Black Squirrel to work on the bike a little more. I think the worst of it for me was the hills. I'm not super strong on them in the first place, so undertraining made that even worse. Without a lot of time on the bike, I also didn't get in my aero bars as much as I would have liked. Didn't dirnk on the bike either, which may not have been a huge detriment in this short race, but I'd like to work on that. Lesson learned. Oh, and my race number was in the front when I headed out. My legs were moving it around as I rode and the number came out of one of the little D rings on my race belt. I've never been a fan of the rings, since the number can come out so easily, but this really pissed me off. I had to slow down and kind of cram the free end of my number under the belt so I didn't lose it on the ride. That cost me a few seconds on the course and even more in T2.

Ride more....duh.

Having not been on the bike enough this summer, I was a little unsteady coming into the dismount. I had to come to a full stop to dismount the bike. Once I was off, I did okay running into transition, except that I ran right past my spot and had to turn around and come back. THEN the whole race number debacle caught up with me here. I was kind of frazzled and could not seem to get my number reattached to the belt. I probably wasted about 30 seconds messing with it.

More graceful dismount, more calm approach to my racking area, and get a new dang race belt so the number can't come off!

Kind of a below average run for me lately, but shaved 5 minutes off my run time from last year! I walked a bit in the middle, but finished really strong. I think this might have been another instance where my lack of bike training hurt me. A stronger finish on the bike would have left me feeling a bit better for the run and I might have run the whole course.

Run training was fine...bike more.

Ate a banana, drank some water, found all my friends. Hung out at the awards ceremony with Brian, Brynn, Rita, and all the rest. Rita took third in her age group! Not bad for her first tri. She said she owed it all to the extra air in her tires. Another friend of ours also took third in his age group and it was also his first race. Guess I've got some talented friends.


Just some bad planning/laziness in regard to the bike. Got some stuff to work on for next year. Hopefully I won't be out of town next summer and it will be a little easier for me to stick to my training schedule.


For a small race, this one keeps getting better and better. I'm impressed with all Papillion is trying to do for the local racing community. Everyone was super nice and I had a great time.