Capitol View Triathlon - TriathlonOlympic

I expected the swim to go well and it did. The swim is my strongest leg so my goal was to be one of the first out of the water in my wave. The swim itself went well, but on the way in to shore I think I should have dolphin dove more. Being newer to triathlon I am not sure how acceptable it is since I didn't see anyone else doing it. I wanted to cut down my T1 time so I wore my shirt under the wetsuit but the zipper got caught on it and I had trouble getting the zipper down. Luckily I was able to free it and got the top half off before I got to the transition area.

I would definately put bodyglide around my neck. I have some bad chafing marks on the back of my neck now. I don't know if I would wear the shirt under the wetsuit any more.

The time was great and I was suprised that I was 5th out of 237 age groupers in T1. I had the problem mentioned above with the shirt under the wetsuit but that was fixed before I got to the transition area. I had rubber banded my shoes to the bike so I ran barefoot to the mounting area. My rack area was only 3 racks from the exit to the bike so it probably was not necessary but it was good practice. I need to practice that more if I want to continue it because I think I lost some time getting my feet into the shoes.

Not sure about the shoes attached to the bike. It is good, but I need more practice.

I did the bike in the time I wanted to, but looking at my time compared to others it looks like I really need to work in this area. The hills were hard. I am better on flat courses I think.

I need to figure out how to get faster. My performance in this race was at my ability, but apparently that is not good enough.

I had not practiced getting out of my shoes on the bike so I unclipped and ran in my bike shoes to the rack area. I therefore had to take off the bike shoes before putting on the running gear. It went pretty smooth though.

I could learn to get out of the shoes and leave them clipped to the bike.

Up to this point in the race I was right where I wanted to be in terms of time. However, I didn't have much for the run. The hills just killed me. I have been having some pretty good training runs of 7:02 per mile for 6 miles the Tuesday before and 7:26 per mile for 4 miles on Thursday before, but those were on a flat track. I had to walk up a number of the hills on this course. It was getting hotter and at each water station I dumped a cup over my head.

I chose to wear socks because when I ran on Friday without socks I felt like I was on the verge of developing a blister in my right arch. I was also running in my old running shoes as I didn't want to ruin my new ones in case there were mud spodt on the course. It was a nice day and I probably could have worn the new ones, but I didn't have them with me.

I need to practice more on hills.

I just walked a lot.


Practice. This was my first triathlon in over a year due to a major injury and I am still working my way back.


As I said above, this was my first race in over a year since I was hit by a truck riding my bike. This was the morning after the one year anniversary of the accident and if you told me one year ago I would be doing a triathlon I would have said you were nuts since they were not sure I would walk again.

The race was well run. There were tons of volunteers which was very good. The shirts they give for the race are nice. There was not much to eat after the race. No finisher medal was a disappointment. (Not that I race for the hardware but something for my first race back would have been a good sentimental keepsake.)