My First Sprint

Yay, I completed my first sprint tri on Saturday.  It was the Old Hickory Lake sprint in Hendersonville, TN.  I had a blast.  Didn't sleep a wink Friday night and had to get up by 5 a.m.  I was too nervous to eat well.  I ate a little oatmeal and a 100 calorie cliff bar.  I was really nervous before the swim.  I got in and almost forgot what I was supposed to do.  Finally I started moving forward doing breaststroke.  Funny, I only trained with freestyle, and for whatever reason, I just couldn't do it Saturday.  T1 was slow and this tri is unique in that you swim, run, bike and run.  The first run was 1.6 miles and with my T1 and run it was like 20 minutes.  T2 was pretty slow because I took the time to eat a GU, and leisurely put on shoes, helmet, and gloves and drank some water, and walked my bike to mount line.  My bike was slower than my normal training speed, and I think it was because I was so afraid I wasn't 3 bike lengths behind the person in front of me and I was afraid I couldn't pass in 15 seconds.  I didn't want any penalties.  After about 3 miles I finally started passing some folks-mostly going uphill.  T3 was pretty quick and I finished the other 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.  All in all my time was 1:42. I am signed up for an olympic in 2 weeks.  I probably shouldn't do a race that quickly, but I really didn't exert myself with this race.  Although the temperatures were really hot and I am not used to training in that kind of heat.  I am training fairly hard this week, and I will scale back the second week.  Not really looking to break any records, just to finish.  I have another Olympic scheduled in Sept. and I think I will have time to really get ready for that one.

All in all I really had a good time.  I did this event with my husband, and we stayed together.  I met some really nice folks, and learned a lot.  I have been reading this forum for a few months, and find the info on here very valuable.  So thanks guys.

jami