Hickory Grove Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

I made it!!!! This is such a big deal for me. I don't think I could do it without the wetsuit though. I seriously don't feel comfortable without one.

I started in the back and to the left and got caught in a pretty decent traffic jam. I felt really good in the wetsuit and settled into a decent rythmn pretty quickly. I got bumped in the head pretty good one time, swam up on a few times & someone attempted to swim over me once but other than that not bad. I didn't try to draft off of anyone.

Start more towards the front. I got in a decent bottleneck with people breaststroking during the first 100 - 200 yards. After the turn around I did pretty good pacing.

I had a little trouble getting out of my wetsuit but not too much. For my 1st ever transition I'm going to give myself an "average rating". I could have done things a bit quicker but I was ok with it today.

Quicker!!!

I rode in the drops and pushed myself pretty hard on the bike as I didn't want to save myself and regret it later. I drank about 12 oz of Lemon-Lime Gatorade and that seemed to work well.

Most of the other bikers had tri bikes (I would guess 75% of them did) and I felt like I was riding about as fast as my bike could go most of the time.

I was a bit hesitant to pass people for some reason. I think I was worried they would blow by me on their fancy tri bikes after they warmed up and make me look like a fool. I need to get over that.

I kept my cadence rather high.

I got a bit concerned that my heart rate was creeping up. During lap two I think I was at about 150-155 BPM.

Maybe ride a bit more in the big chain ring and not be so hesitant to pass.

I didn't even think about taking my shoes off while I was still riding and I about endo'ed on my dismount.

I also didn't do anything special with my shoe laces so I had to tie them all up and double knot them before I could start running. The race belt thing was a bit uncomfortable as well. We received race belts in our packets. Prior to that I planned on pinning my # on my tri shirt.

Get some speed laces or something!

Figure out the comfortable spot for a race belt.

Practice dismounts.

The first part was cross country (grass and wood chips) with small hills and not much fun. It took about 1.25 miles before I felt like I had my legs under me. After that I felt really good for about 5 min. Then during the last mile my legs started to feel like they wanted to give out a bit.

I didn't drink anything during the run and I think that was ok for me.

Push myself a little harder. Since this was my first race I had difficulty judging how running at a certain race would make me feel down the line.

I need to get faster.

Stood around drinking Gatorade. Ate a bit of a banana, sliver of a bagel and a lot of oranges.


This was my first race and I didn't really know how to pace myself.


Very good 1st complete race. They had a ton of people in the water to help keep a watch on swimmers which was great. The volunteers were very good in general and there were a lot of them. The post race atmosphere is ok but not great.

The goodies in our packet were pretty good.

I'm glad I can officially say I am a triathelete now!