Finally, a triathlon that doesn’t require a long drive. I get to sleep in a whole 30 extra minutes!
This time I get to transition right when it opens. I prefer to give myself time to relax and chase down any issues that could pop up. Rushing is no good.
Here’s the obligatory, “I’m here before anyone else, including the sun” shot.
And the, “now EVERYONE is here” shot.
Some of you may be interested in how I set up transition.
You’ll see that I place my helmet on my aero bars, with the straps out and front of the helmet towards the front of the bike. Then I place my sunglasses inside the helmet. This way I can out on glasses, put on the helmet and be strapped in as quickly as possible.
As for my footwear, I put my bike shoes in front, on my towel to dry/clean off my feet. At T2, I am able to stand in the same place and quickly swap to my running shoes/hats while taking a quick drink.
Despite having “seeded” myself high with a good swim time, I quickly discovered that your number meant little and you line up based on you expected swim time that day.
Being the newcomer to the sport, I once again lined up how fast I would actually swim, not accounting for the fact everyone lies. So I was somewhere in the red circle, while I should have been somewhere in the green circle. (You may need to click to open it larger, this is a HUGE race.)
The result of my truthfulness/noobness again had me swimming OVER people. At first you feel bad plowing them over, the you realize they’re dirty liars and deserve to be run over if they can’t keep the pace they lined up to do. It’s certainly not my fault, considering I swam within a few seconds of my predicted time. Or maybe I’m an asshole.
Complaining aside, the long run to the transition gave me a nice short run with my bike.
I felt great on the bike course, so good I nearly decided to do three laps instead of two.
The run was like every run I’ve ever done, going from feeling great to hating my decision to become a triathlete. However, once I hit the last mile or so, I felt quite good and kicked up the pace, ending with a great sprint down the spectators’ row, for a 1:08:19 finish, which was good enough for 21st in my age group.
And then I got the best tri pict ever of my son Nate and me:
