Posts Tagged‘Olympic’

2015 Chicago Triathlon Triple Challenge

This past weekend I competed in my second Chicago Triathlon Triple Challenge. This “challenge” involves racing in three triathlons in one weekend. Saturday morning we did a SuperSprint (click hear to read about just that race) (375m swim | 10.5K bike | 2.5K run), followed by an International (1.5K swim | 40K bike | 10K run) and Sprint (750m swim | 24.5K bike | 5K run) four hours after the International race started. All told, I was going at race pace for just over 4.5 hours. Needless to say, I was a bit tired Sunday evening. International Distance Race The first race of the morning on Sunday was thankfully the International Distance. Us crazy triples were the first to go off, hopping in the (comparatively) balmy 65° water a couple minutes before 6:00 am. Once we all had our chance to “self-heat” our wetsuits (yes, I wore mine this time, in addition…

The Triple Challenge – three triathlons in two days

Apparently there’s a lot of crazy people out there. I’ve discovered I’m not the only one. There’s enough of us that three individual triathlons have been combined into a single event, catering to the crazy few that see a single triathlon as not large enough of a challenge. This event is the Chicago Triathlon Triple Challenge. You get to do one SuperSprint, Sprint and Olympic triathlon in the span of about 30 hours, “for a total of 59 miles that includes 1.63 miles in the water, 46.3 miles on the bike and 10.85 miles on the run.” Looking at those numbers, I realized that it was about a half Ironman and I thought this would be a perfect Ironman test. If I could do this without trouble, I’d work towards completing a full Ironman in 2015. In 2014, the order was a SupersSprint on Saturday morning. Then you get to…

ITU Chicago Triathlon

It’s time for my first olympic triathlon, and my first “big time tri,” ITU Chicago. For those of you not in the know, this is close to the same race that the professional triathletes do as part of the ITU tour. The day started off wet. As in, my car nearly hydroplaned into a concrete highway divider on 294 due to the torrential downpours. Not the best way to start the day. Given than transition setup was the day before the race, some athletes had the foresight to cover parts of their bike to protect from the rain. This was a massive transition area, but thankfully my spot was near the end of a row and right by a sign. I felt bad for those in the center somewhere without an easily recognized landmark. Annoyingly, transition was a good half mile or more from the swim start. Preferring to not throw away…