Manassas Mini Tri - TriathlonSprint

Major panic freak out at the beginning of the swim. You start sitting on the edge of the pool and the starter gives you a push in when it's your turn to go. Not sure if it was the push in or the fact that I had just scooted into the start seat or what, but I got a mouth full of water and never recovered. I couldn't get my breathing right at all and after the first 25, ended up holding to the wall gasping for air. Tried to do the next length and the same thing happened. Finally gave up on front crawling somewhere around 75 to 100 yards in b/c it was getting me nowhere and switched to elem. backstroke. My breathing was still messed up, but I could handle it better on my back. I have never been so happy to get out of the pool in my life.

I don't know really. I don't know why I freaked out like that. Well I do kind of. I need to find a way to deal with pre-race anxiety/jitters better. I get very nervous before a race and swimming with those nerves makes the swim bad, then i get more anxious b/c the swim is going bad....downhill from there. But I'm going to work on this. Being more comfortable in the water and swimming more should help. More race experience will help with race nerves. I mean I've been swimming for less than one year - it's going to take time to feel like a little fishy.

The results have no transition times. I know they took our swim time when we got out of the pool and I saw the guy check off the bike time when hit the dismount line. So I'm assuming my bike time includes the walk (we couldn't run in the pool area) to the outside door, run to transition, and time spent in transition.

Anyway, dried off the feet, body glide applied and shoes/socks on. My sister, who has never been to a triathlon before, ran through transition to say hi and check on me. I yelled out no, you can't be here! LOL. I have to teach her tri rules for the future.

I spent a lot of time putting body glide on b/c I've gotten blisters the last few races (run and tri). I wish I knew a better/faster way to prevent blisters.

A couple of inclines, but not too bad. I've been trying to spend more time on hillier courses and I could tell on this ride. My plan was to push it. I pretty much never stopped pedaling, except for on once going down a little hill. I just pushed really hard. I wish I knew what my real time was for just the bike portion, because I suspect I did pretty good. Me thinks the annoying broken bike computer issue needs to be fixed ASAP at the bike shop! Only one person passed me and I actually increased my distance in front of the person behind me.

Nothing at all. I liked my bike a lot. I thought I did good, but I was still surprised to see that I ranked MOP on the bike!

As with the T1, there are no transition times. So I'm guessing that T2 time is included with the run portion, since I saw a timer when I got to transition and nobody else until the finish line.

Just helmet off, took a swig of gatorade, race belt on, and out I went. I almost went the wrong way, it was confusing at first, but I got it. Also, you really couldn't run, you had to walk. The bike racks were so close together and people were everywhere, so running wasn't an option. They said that they were keeping everyone out of transition til the race was over, but that didn't happen. Lots of people and family members in the transition area and it made for a little frustration getting in and out.

Nothing, I like my T2, especially since I use toe cages, it goes fast.

Felt decent off the bike. The one course thing I really didn't like happened here. When you come out of transition, you run across a street and onto a sidewalk and continue down that sidewalk. You were supposed to stay to the left. But that sidewalk was also about 20 feet from the finishing chute and people coming down it were not staying to the left. The guy that was finishing as I got to the sidewalk was pretty much right in the middle. So I had to kind of pause to let him through, then continue on my way. Actually nobody stayed on the right side of the sidewalk, everyone was in the middle. That was the problem with having the whole run on sidewalks.

Okay for my run, started out slow. I didn't have my legs yet. My goal was not to walk, but to run/jog the whole thing. So I chugged along. I felt like I was moving slow, especially for a 1.4 mile run, but my legs weren't really getting the memo to speed up. Anyway, I just kept chugging. And I finished and didn't walk :)

Run faster instead of run/jogging. I suspect that pushing on the bike like I did probably had an impact, because this was a really slow pace. So I guess that means I should do some bricks, huh! I'm planning on training for a 10K this summer and that will help with my overall run strength too.

Waited at the finish line to see the woman from my swim classes finish. She is an older lady, in her 60s that just learned to swim so she could do a triathlon. So I wanted to cheer her in. Took some pics with my sis and my teammate that was doing this race as her first triathlon. Then packed up transition and went to eat breakfast!


Anxiety for the swim, training (i have kind of relaxed since Reston two weeks ago).


Good race. GREAT for newbies. Very welcoming lots of different body shapes and bikes and all that on the course. Course was a good level of difficulty for me. I do wish that the transition times were separated from the swim/bike/run times. But there was no chip timing, so that would have taken quite a few more volunteers I'd guess. I didn't like some of the structure of the course since the start of the run and the finish crossed each other. I didn't like the swim start (being pushed in). The race was fun and festive. The way the course was structured, it was very spectator friendly which was nice.