Sunday I did my first sprint triathlon!
Initially I thought that the swimming portion of the triathlon was the most dangerous portion of a triathlon, as it turns out, it’s the 2 days following it. Let me summarize.
So Sunday I woke up at 5:30 with “woke up” being loosely translated here. I barely was able to sleep. So after what probably ended up being a total of 5 hours of sleep I woke up, took a quick shower and headed out to the location of the triathlon.
All marked up and ready to go
Lisa and I got there around 6:30 to give me enough time to get my biking and running gear set up in the transition area, have my body numbered with magic marker, strap on my chip timer and pee about 3 times because my body was super hydrated.
By this time it was about 7:30 and things were about ready to start. By about 8:20 or so my wave of triathletes was called up to the line. I was happy to notice that the water was much warmer than I expected maybe even warmer than the water of the lap pool at the local gym. A little bit later they start the countdown and off we go.
Me: dead tired. Those nice ladies: passing me.
Now for the swimming portion, I thought it would be a good idea to just stick towards the back of the pack. I could swim, follow the people in front of me and not have to worry about getting elbowed or kicked a whole lot. However, I found out my plan didn’t quite pan out. Instead, I spent the entire time running into people’s legs, elbowing the the people I started passing and then eventually kicking the people who I had passed. I think the next time I’m going to move myself to the front and maybe practice swimming in the lap pool with my eyes closed for a portion of it….to practice swimming in a straight line with out a line to go off of. That seemed to be the hardest part. Beyond that it was just a little swimming, not nearly as bad as I had expected. Don’t get me wrong…by the last stretch I was pretty much exhausted, but it was definitely manageable.
So after all that drama was done, I got up to my bike and found the second flaw(s) in my plan. I had attached my number to my shirt with safety pins (not knowing that they make special straps for belting them around you instead). This proved to be an issue when I pulled the shirt over my head and ended up ripping the safety pins out of my number, due to my shirt stretching over my arms. Along with that I had used the towel to just dry off my feet, instead of my upper body too, so I had to awkwardly stretch this super lightweight stretchy shirt over my odd shaped torso. Which I’m sure if anyone was paying attention outside of the transition area, it would have looked pretty darn funny. After everything was sorted out, I started running my bike over to the “mounting line” where you can actually get onto your bike. The whole time running next to my bike I just remember thinking, “don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip”. I probably should have practiced that a little bit, but it turned out ok.
Getting onto the bike and ready to roll.
So then I was off to the races on my bike. This turned out being what I planned for it to be, get a solid time and let my muscles recover a bit. It was a little windy, so I had to work a little harder on the way out with the hills and the wind, but on the way back I was able to keep a really good pace. A couple of times I tried pushing it a little harder and could feel my calves start to cramp up, so I just took it easy. Overall I managed to average about 20 mph which was my goal. At one point I was going down a hill with the wind at my back and actually stopped pedaling because I was somewhere around 40mph and had never gone that fast on my bike before so I was a little apprehensive as to what it’s top speed was :). I could just see my front axle popping out of it’s fork and me flying over the handlebars. In total I only passed a couple people with bike troubles. One guy just had his chain slip off and another poor lady was walking her bike back. Soon I was back to the transition area and getting ready to jump off my bike to start my run. That is however a little easier said than done, as demonstrated by a lady in front of me. She gracefully side stepped off her bike and went directly into a run only to promptly land flat on her butt right in front of the guy behind her…who locked up his breaks and toppled over next to her. Luckily I was far enough back that I could hit the breaks and wait for the smoke to clear, but the first thing that passed through my mind were the videos you see on ESPN2 of the Tour de France and some poor sucker hitting the asphalt only to bring half of the pack with him.
The second transition was pretty smooth and off I went on my 5k, but not before rocking out a little to the cheesy music they had blaring over the loud speakers at the transition area. I remember laughing to myself at the “Final Countdown” blaring while I changed into my running shoes. By this time my muscles were pretty tired and there wasn’t much excitement, just a nice little run with plenty of people.
It’s interesting how much easier it is to do any of this during the actual event when there are people right along with you. I found the event to be a lot easier than I was expecting, but that I think has a lot to do with the amount of practice and training I was able to do in advance, thanks to Lisa keeping me motivated to swim my laps, ride mile after mile on my bike and put in countless laps around the RAC track. Overall I had a great time (minus the major fever I had later that night and into the next day) and I’m pretty sure I’ll try it at least one more time!
Finishing! (and that wasn't my actual time, that was how long it was since the first heat took off, my final time was 1:21:21)
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