Peachtree City International Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

Okay, so obviously I'm not the best (or really even good at this point) swimmer. With a background in SCUBA and recreational swimming, I really underestimated the difficulty in competitive swimming. I originally focused my training primarily on the bike since it was the longest portion of the race. At about 5 weeks out, I went to a lap pool and was "readjusted" to the realities that I could not swim well. While I could perform a "polo" swim at a good clip for about a lap in the pool, I was gasping for air quickly and knew I could not maintain this for the almost mile needed for the race. I spent the next couple of weeks going to the pool almost daily, sometimes twice a day to work on technique. I watched the best swimmers make the front crawl look almost effortless. I however, am still not able to execute it more than about a pool length before I am out of breath or simple out of breathing coordination and am choking myself to death. This "could" be tolerable in a pool swim but in open water I knew I would be in trouble. I read and read and watched others but simply couldn't teach it to myself and knew I had such little time I was unlikely to be efficient at it by race day. I switched to what I knew and was comfortable with, a side stroke and backstroke. I practiced what I thought would be the course once before race day and thought I would die. I had my wife follow (and sometimes run over) me in a kayak. The day I chose was particularly windy which added a nice chop to the water and successfully drowned me a couple of times during the swim. My practice time was 50 minutes which was both depressingly slow and in threat of being DQ'd on time. Needless to say, on race day I was quite nervous. The swim start was a pair every 5 seconds or so. I strategically placed myself at the back of the pack (about 50 from the end) so as not to be in the way of folks that could actually swim. I took off and "simulated" a crawl as long as I could. My strategy was to move quickly to the outside of the pack (to get out of the ay of the "swimmers") and at least get far enough away from the spectators before I flipped over into a ridiculous backstroke to the duration of the race. At about 150 yards out, I was totally out of breath and my lungs were half full of water so I figured now was as good as ever. I was really having a tough time getting a breath. The wetsuit I was wearing compressed my chest enough that it was hard breathing out of water much less in the heat of battle and very nervous. So I stopped for a second, perched my goggles up on my forehead and on top of the way too tight fitting swim cap (which I had never worn before and gave me some sort of stretched facelift which made my goggles not keep water out anyway) and proceeded to flip on my back and start backstroking. God bless her but immediately a young (20 something) woman about 10 yards behind (or now in front of me since I was facing the entry at this point) worriedly asked me if I was okay. I think she thought I was giving it up and was going to drown. I assured her that I was okay and kept on going. After a coupe hundred yards of "proper" backstroke, alternating arms as I stroked, I had swallowed enough lake water as my face dipped down each time I rotated arms, I invented an "alternative" stroke. You might call it a reverse breast stroke. I call if an underwater snow angel. I simply took a deep breath, placed both hands above my head, and pulled them down to my sides as hard as I could. I stopped kicking my legs and just crossed them to remain as streamlined as possible, letting the wetsuit hold me up. I know this must have looked ridiculous as every single rescue kayak I passed asked if I was okay. Even though this sounds crazy to attempt a mile doing this, I had a couple of decades of gym strength training under my belt and knew that I could keep this up and use lots of power in my arms and back for quite some time. I surprisingly not only somewhat maintained my position in the pack, I even passed a couple of people. Sighting of course was non-existent so I had to flip around every once in a while and get my bearing. I had attempted to sight off of other swimmers but it seems everyone I chose was working quite a zig-zag. Needless to say, I had quite a long swim distance wise (probably went an additional couple hundred yards in total) but surprisingly I made a "decent" time of 40 minutes for a totally inefficient swim stroke.

Obviously learn to swim. Since I learned that I couldn't, I immediately ordered the Total Immersion course and plan on completing it prior to entering the sprint distance race in Peachtree City in the fall. I hear good reviews and hope that I can basically wipe the slate clean and start over learning to swim. At worst, at least I know I can get through the water, I just won't ever win doing it this way and likely would eventually injure my shoulders doing so. For this first race though it was just about survival.

Okay, no excuse, transition was just miserable. I came out of the water with a severe case of the "dumb-dumbs". I was obviously fairly exhausted after 40 minutes of underwater snow angels and was genuinely "sea sick" after bobbing about on my back in everyone else's waves. Once my feet hit some underwater mush, I just started running, figuring it would be faster than my feeble attempts at swimming. I started out of my wetsuit and had it to my waist once I got on land. I recall my 3 kids yelling"yeah" and my wife exclaiming "thank god" (she of course thought I would drown myself during the swim) but I couldn't even see straight enough to try to look for them, I just knew which general direction my bike was in. I tried the "step on your wetsuit legs to step out of it" trick (obviously not having practiced it enough to no avail. I sat on the 5 gallon bucket I brought and ripped it off still trying to bring my blood oxygen levels back up. I dried my feet with a towel and struggled to get bike socks on and then on with the bike shoes (very loose as I had a crippling experience in training by putting them on too tight and finding out later that I could no longer walk). Kind of anal about keeping my feet clean and dry so this was important to me. Took a big bite off of a banana and chugged a cup of so of gatorade since I figured I had burned quite few calories in the swim.

Need to really rework my whole transition plan (or actually come up with one and rehearse it more).

In general, I felt great on the bike despite the tragedy that was my ride. I rode faster than I ever did in training. I started out strong, passing a couple of folks once on the course (which felt good given my miserable swim). The pedaling and bloodflow quickly cleared the fog and disorientation which resulted from my swim. Preparing for the bike, I should have known I would be in for an interesting ride. Just 2 days before the race, I went to my local bike shop to pick up some "recovery" drink to put in my bottle for the ride. They recommended a slightly different drink than I had used in training. The package looked the same and the flavor had "orange" in the title but I really didn't pay much attention to it. I mixed the drinks prior to heading off for the swim and put them on the bike. At about 2 miles or so into the ride, I figured I needed to start drinking with the goal of sipping down both bottles by the end of the race to be fully hydrated for the run. That first sip was totally hideous. I did all I could not to spit it out or puke. I attempted several times initially to drink some, knowing I needed to, and did manage a couple of swallows but I knew I couldn't rely on this drink to get me through. I did recall that there was a drink station halfway through the ride so I counted on filling up then so I just kept pedaling on. With time to think about "race strategy", I figured that if I couldn't drink, at least I could fuel up a little with some GU. I popped open by little storage bag at about mile 5 to get one and start sucking it down and out flew a little bottle of chewable mineral tablets which were supposed to stop and/or fight off cramps. Just wasn't careful enough as I tried to manipulate the GU and that little bottle hit the pavement and scattered my little cramp saviors all over the road which were subsequently crushed to dust by the riders behind me. Oh well, strike 2, no drink, no cramp relief. What else could go wrong? Had a great ride to the halfway point, felt strong despite the now parched mouth. Saw folks handing out Gatorade near the turnaround. What a relief! The first bottle I tried to snag I just slapped out of the volunteers hand (haven't practiced this maneuver during training). I quickly apologized and on the second shot, I carefully reached my hand backward as I drove by to gingerly remove the bottle from the young lady's hand. I managed a couple of badly needed sips and held in my hand as I continued to pedal away. I realized that I needed somewhere to keep this bottle as it was my only practical drink for the remainder of the ride. With both cages full of the undrinkable liquid, I found that the bottle balanced well on top of my aero bars. This worked well until the next sharp turn when I forgot that the bottle was just balanced there. Halfway into the turn, the bottle went airborne and nearly clobbered one of the courseworkers. He narrowly jumped to avoid it as I hollered back "sorry". I continued on, not daunted by my inability to get any liquids. On the ride back out of the turnaround, I knew I would be back by the drink station I definitely was going to get a drink. As I approached, I braked hard, popped out of my pedals dumped out the crap drink I had and filled up one of my bottles with the Gatorade. That was the best drink in the world as I nursed it on the ride back. Ride back went great. Managed to pass a couple of more folks which was a great morale booster. Little did I know that I would see them again later!

Definitely plan out my nutrition better! That was really the only disappointing part of the ride. Other than that, probably get a real road bike. I'm riding a "fitness" bike right now with aero bars and clipless pedals added. The frame geometry appears to be much more like a mountain bike since I'm sitting much more vertical. This is great and comfortable when riding with my kids but feels like I'm driving a billboard in the wind when trying to go fast. In addition, I just don't have enough "gear" and feel like I have more power to pedal but just can't pedal any faster. I figured an average of 18 MPH is respectable given the bike and I hope to improve it with a road bike purchase in the future.

Transition here was slow again. I changed socks which I think was the main culprit and didn't use speed laces on my shoes which probably didn't help.

Practice, practice, practice!

OMG. I tanked the run. The almost total lack of hydration on the bike caught up to me here I think. I started cramping very slightly almost immediately once I hit the run (I of course recalled in slo-mo as my anti-cramp chewables flew from the bike and were pulverized on the road). To add to the insult, I took off without my race belt which had my number. I realized it a couple hundred yards into the run as I was approaching the bridge over the lake. Since this was my first race and I was unsure of all of the technical rules, there was no way I was going to run the next 6 miles and be DQ'd at the end. I tucked my tail and returned to the transition area to get my number. This was somewhat confusion for the timing folks since I had beeped out onto the run. we all decided I should bypass the mats, get my number, and get back on the course. Not like I was in contention for a medal or anything anyway. I got my belt and got back on course. At this point, cramps were advancing and morale was getting low. I plodded along, sucking on a GU, hoping it would pick me up. It never did. I ran/walked to rest of the race. I kept enough in reserve so at least I could run across the bridge, up the hill, and through the finish. Thank God!!!

Despite a miserable run with my fuel tank on E, I did give it almost all I had left. While I could have pushed a little harder and shaved maybe a couple of minutes off the total time, I figured I was more at risk of aggravating my developing shin splints or some worse kind of injury, so I crippled along with lots of "lessons learned" to improve on next time.

Gasping for air, trying to keep drinks down, not thinking about the warm bar-b-que lunch which I'd love to eat but am too afraid I'd hurl.


Of course, overall, general endurance conditioning is my biggest area of improvement. I entered the race last minute with no expectation of a stellar performance. Just wanted to get some experience under my belt. Aside from that and given my level of conditioning, I think my obvious areas of improvement would be in swimming ability and nutrition/hydration on the bike.


I really enjoyed the race. I came for experience and to set a baseline for myself and did both of those. I met a lot a very nice and helpful folks. While I'm sure this review probably won't provide much useful information to true triathletes, I hope it did provide some comic relief as experienced by a "newbie no more".