Patanella's Flat as a PANCAKE - TriathlonSprint

first time without a wetsuit, which i half regretted when i found out we were treading water to wait at the buoy, instead of beach-starting (and a jellyfish stung me with 2 minutes to start)

again, as in recent races, i am a different (slower) swimmer in race conditions. complete mystery, as it turns out the wetsuit was not the problem. with such easy conditions, i am stumped to make sense of the huge gap between pool (1:45-1:50/100) and race (2:10-2:20) paces.

swim fast, hopefully. although to be fair, the run in the sand was long-sh (wish i had timed it)...

spaced out and forgot to wash the sand off my feet, then remembered, so transition slow. getting on and going and into shoes pretty smooth.

perhaps skip fresh-water bath and just go

traffic a little messy; almost taken out by a guy on the turn in the second loop, which motivated me to speed up and get away from him (hence that was my fastest of 3 loops); drank the HEED mostly, not the water and ended up with cramps, so had to take it easy for a while, hoping they would pass. had a funny conversation with a guy on the third loop (he didn’t know how many we had to do). out into a headwind, back with a tailwind x 3.

next time, turn on the power sooner and taper off in the second half of the last loop to ready to run. perhaps sprint away from less skilled handlers before turns...

dismount/transition entrance was bottlenecked or i could have gone faster. 3 tries to rack (arms fatigued) ;o

ease off bike sooner, stand up, stretch, get ready to run (while still on bike)

BAD GI situation (as usual), but i didn't drink much (i bot HEED only, almost no water), so either should have had 1) proportionally more water/less HEED or 2) less gel, or 3) more water with gel...; L groin seized out of transition so walked; couldn't run mi 1 bc/ GI, jogged mile 2 slowly and finaly got a regular pace in mi 3. burning up by second half, but couldn't get ice at the water station (they weren't really listening).

solve GI problems; try to get ice from the water stations

didn't use any recovery fuel; spritzed at the shower, then went to cheer for team.


1) sleep deprivation (up til 2:30, though in bed by 10), 2) GI, 3) heat, 4) swim mystery


i loved this race and had good fun doing it with 10-15 team mates, but what followed sort of ruined it for me. it turns out i won my division, but didn't know for sure because i vanished from the results. it was like my entire day's worth of efforts (train-bike-ferry-train-bike-tri-etc.) was invalidated, to say nothing of being robbed of my first win. evidently because of a race management mistake, i was disqualified. the results company half "re-instated" me after the fact (in the overall results, but not the awards), but it was a "buzz-kill". and the race management simply e-mailed me my overall finish place, a number and no more in the way of explanation or anything.