DQ Triathlon at Island Beach State Park - TriathlonSprint

Swim was average for me. By the time we went off there was a pretty good chop in the ocean. It was crowded around the first buoy, but I was able to find a lane after that. I took a good gulp of salt water just before the last buoy.

Not much - need to keep working on my swimming.

T1 was average. Between the swim and the run to transition, I was a little out of it by the time I got to the bike. I was able to get in and out fairly quickly though.

Need to get new shoes and pedals (maybe) in order to transition with shoes already clipped in. 7 year old Sidi's are too soft to get my foot in easily, and the float on my Speedplay pedals makes the shoe move around too much.

Bike was pretty good. The course was completely flat and there was a tailwind on the way out, so I was able to keep speed between 24.5 and 25.5. I knew we would have the wind in our face on the way back. The headwind after the turnaround wasn't too bad, but speed on the way back was about 20.5. I got passed about 3-4 and passed about 15 people.

Nothing. My bike is improving, and since this was the last race of the season, I want to build on this over the winter. I need a new bike - I think I've taken the 7 year old Cannondale as far as I can.

Good T2. 36 seconds was 9th overall. I pulled my feet out of my shoes while still on the bike, so all I had to do was rack the bike, get rid of the helmet, throw on the running shoes, grab the race # and the Garmin watch and go. There was a guy who had squeezed into our rack (no rack assignments at this race) rather rudely who was busy sitting down getting his shoes on when I was racking my bike. He had spread all his stuff out under my rack spot. I had no problem running over all of it with my bike since he was taking up my space! Lack of courtesy from fellow racers is really irritating.

Nothing - good T.

Once again, not enough juice to get my run pace down. Better than last race, but still a little slower than I would have liked. I really like having the Garmin on the run to give me an idea of what my pace is, and about how much distance is left on the run. Once again, the run course was actually longer than 5k (3.18 vs. 3.1), so pace was slightly better than the results show (7:25 vs. 7:37). Still slower than I would have liked.

Train harder.

Not much of a warm down - a little stretching.


Need to lose 10 lbs and need to more running speedwork.


Really well organized race. Weather was perfect. I think the date of the race (mid-October) scared a lot of people off because they thought it would be too cold, but the water temp was not bad and by the time we hit the run, I was starting to get a little warm, but not too bad.