Chattanooga Waterfront Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

As I lowered myself into the water, the water temp was just right. I had about 6 in front of me before I would be off. Before I knew it, I was off. I tried to get into a groove and find a comfortably hard pace. For the most part, I was able to keep my pace steady. for the first half, I stayed just inside the buoy. I was glad that I really wasnt having to dodge too many people.About 5 miles in, the sky opened up and it started raining hard. After I got past the half way point, I started to make my way back towards the shore. I really only had two issues on the swim. At one point I got kicked in the ribs twice. I turned my head to find out it was one of the ladies from my tri club. Then, right before the turn towards the shore, I came up on two people who I thought I could go between, but right at the last minute, the space closed off. I stopped and looked, I thought I was going to have to go around them, but the spread apart again and I darted between them. I picked it up as I approached the swim finish, then had to climb up the metal stairs out of the water. Apparently in previous years, they had to literally yank racers out of the water by their arms. Definitely a big improvment. Then I had to run up about 15 or so concrete stairs, in the rain, and then down the grass, cross the street, and then into transition.

Try to push even faster. Maybe actually draft off someone

T1 was pretty good. Had to pour the water out of my shoes before I could put them on.

Cover my shoes with plastic

This is by far my weakest of the 3 sports. Luckily, Ryan had given me the 411 on the bike course. The worst hill was around mile 5 then "it wasnt bad after that". I decided to use the first 5 miles to recover and I would try to pick it up once I crested that hill. That hill was pretty tough, I thing I would average about 7 or 8 mph going up it. For about the first 10 miles, it was raining the whole way. I am not sure why, but as soon as I got on the bike, my back was bothering me. This made getting into aero really uncomfortable. On the uphills, I was averaging about 13 mph on the few flat sections I was easily upwards of 18 mph and really picked up speed on the downhills. Unfortunately, the hills werent truly rolling. I could not use the downhills to my advantage. As we were coming back in towards transition, the rain started again and the skies opened up.I decided it would not be safe to do a shoes on flying dismount, so I did a normal slow dismount and ran into transition.

Need more bike training, especially hills

Chose not to fly off bike due to wet roads. My shoes and socks were soaked, but nothing I could do about it

See T1

I knew the first half mile was uphill, so I took it easy. My plan on the run was to just run at whatever felt good. The first few miles were great.I chose to walk each of the water stops to let my legs recover. A few times I had to remind myself that this time I would only be racing against myself. While I wasnt a fan of the course in that it was mainly concrete sidewalks and a slippery wooden boardwalk, I did like that this course was out and back. all along the way, I ran into folks from the tri club and we cheered each other on. There was a set of stairs we had to climb up at like mile 1 and then back donm at mile 6. Around mile 5.5, there was a tough quarter mile or so uphill I chose to walk it so I had something left for the finish. Once I came down the stairs, I began to pick it back up to finish strong. As I was coming in, I was greeted by a whole bunch of folks from the tri club rining the cowbells and cheering like mad men. I picked it up and sprinted strong to the finish

The hills, the rain, my poor bike strength


Well put together race. I felt pretty good for my first olympic distance tri. I really need to work harder on the bike. It was great to have all the folks from NAMSC there cheering us on at the end