Memphis in May - TriathlonOlympic

The run into the water was a bit of a shocker as it was colder than I expected. I was wearing my DeSoto wetsuit pants, but nothing on my torso except a tri jersey. Still, after a few strokes I never noticed the cold. I had a really good swim, sighted pretty well, and kept my focus the whole time. Other than a few people doing breast stroke who nearly broke my nose, it was a pretty uneventful swim. I did get stuck in the muck a little bit when exiting the water.

Not a thing.

I tend to take a pretty minimal approach to transitions. All you need to do is take off the wetsuit, put on the helmet, sunglasses, and bike shoes and hit the road. I used to do the flying bike mount, but have decided it's really not worth it, especially if the bike course starts up hill like this one.

This is by far the flattest bike course I've ever done. Living in northeast Tennessee, we don't have anything like this. I felt strong for about 20 miles or so, but started to falter a little bit at the end. I've been training pretty hard on the bike, but I don't think I've done enough longer quality-type workout (2x20min, 2x30min, etc.) Still, with as much wind as we had, I'm relatively happy with this bike split. I would have loved to have broken 1 hour, but it just wasn't meant to be.

Longer duration at high intensity during training.

I like my new Zoot shoes. The make transition pretty easy.

This was a much tougher run course than I expected and was also the longest run I've done in the last 6 weeks. I'm just getting over an achilles injury and only started running again last weekend.

The first mile was good (6:20), but the next 5 were pretty tough, but relatively consistent. I never really bonked, just didn't have the snap in my legs that I needed. I think with better training leading up to the race I could have gone closer to 40 instead of just over 43. Still, all things considered, this was a decent run for me.

Wow, I had forgotten how much an olympic distance race hurts at the end. I staggered around for a while, drank my gatorade, found some shade, and just chilled out. After a little more recovery I had some really good barbeque before getting on the road for the 7 hour drive back to Kingsport.


Had I not been injured over the last 6 weeks my run would have been better. Still, a good race at a nice venue.


This was my first time at this race. I was really impressed with the organization. It went off without a hitch. You would never know that there were close to 1700 people racing. It may be a bit far to drive for me to do it again, but I'm glad I made it to Memphis at least once.