Disco Sprint Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Started out fine. Had a great line to the first buoy and plenty of feet to draft off of. But I kept finding myself running into anyone I was drafting. Couldn't find the right pair of feet.

After the first turn I took a very bad line and was way off course, at least 20 yards. Probably cost me 20 seconds to get back on line. Did the same thing after the second turn. Just didn't find a good pair of feet to do the work so I was all alone.

Find those fast feet.

Not going to complain too much, other than with a wetsuit it's my first OW swim under 2:00 per. I just know I can do a lot better.

Ho hum T1. Long run from the beach to transition. One day I'll practice the flying thing. Otherwise no worries.

If I practiced some stuff, I could probably cut 30 seconds off of this. Lots of wasted time in here.

So remember those blister blockers on MFF? Apparently they aren't waterproof. They're somewhere in the lake I guess. The first mile of the shoe rubbing on my MFA was painful. After than I just tuned it out.

Pretty good ride for me I would say. Finally crossed over the 21mph boundary. Passed a few, got passed by a few. Nice thing is everyone who passed me had race wheels. One upgrade I haven't made yet. Yet. (Hoping Shannon didn't read that)

Didn't really hammer all out, but I went just a hair under LT. Wanted to save the legs a bit so I could hammer the run.

After the turnaround I expected a bit of headwind, but there was absolutely none. A race in Texas with no wind? Wow. It even started sprinkling on me a bit. That was awesome. Kept the temps down nicely.

The hills weren't too bad. Seemed worse last year. Spun up all of them but one. Decided it would be fun to stand and hammer and pass 4 guys at the same time. Hence the high HR of 184. And yes, it was fun to see them hurt.

Get race wheels

Actually gained 4 seconds on the 2nd place finisher. And that was with having to fidget with my socks a bit. Woo. Hoo.

That whole riding on top of shoes thingy.

Felt horrible for 2/3 of this run. Stomach didn't absorb my gel that I took at mile 10 of the bike. I dunno. Probably should just ignore the bike gels on Sprints from now on. Throughout mile two I was burping strawberry banana each step. By the last mile I was ok and could hit the speed boost button.

Got passed twice on this run. I hate to get passed, but they were punk kids (18 and 19). One of them ran a 17-something. The other was only a few seconds faster than me. With more run volume I could probably have hung on to him. But heck, I'm just impressed that I had the endurance to do what I did with my limited run volume thanks to MFA.

Not feel like puking the 2nd mile due to gel.

Why do I keep drinking that nasty Vitamin Water crap? Didn't see any water I guess. Warm down was a one shoed jog to transition to get some flip flops on. My MFA's MFF was killing me. Wanted to get those shoes OFF.

Hung out waiting for everyone to finish. Then we got to listen to some girl butcher everyone's names in the awards. "Jim Smi...Smy..Sm... Jim from Coppell?"

Going 10 deep in AG awards sounded like a good idea, but golly it took forever. I don't think there's really any reason to go farther than 5 deep. Maybe if they only bought half as many awards they could have some shirts that actually fit right and weren't see through. When I finally got my award, the medal fell off. That was funny.

What's not funny is what happened with the results. If you look at the swim times, either some world records were set, or somebody screwed up. Thankfully it was not a problem in my wave as we went first. But later waves had people listed in the wrong AG (even gender) and they did no proofreading of the awards. So people who were listed in the wrong wave had a swim time that started with that incorrect wave. So some people who won their AG had swim times of 2 minutes. Nice job guys. Way to check things and make sure they are right.


Swim - Poor drafting

Bike - Effort level

Run - Volume


Improved over last years' utter fiasco, but still needs improvement.

The fiasco with the timing is just plain wrong. All it would really take is a timing mat at the beginning of the race. But I guess DA can't afford it. IRP and Playtri can for all of theirs, but I guess DA doesn't get the same discount. OK, stopping now before my rant continues.