Triathlon Results

How did the triathlon go? It went alright. I didn’t reach any of my goals so that is highly disappointing. The swim went OK and I actually enjoyed the swim. The water was 73 degrees. I would say that pretty much an ideal temperature. This triathlon they had a different start than any other one I have done. Instead of setting people off in waves of 50 people, it was 2 people every 5 seconds. That is nice because you don’t have just arms and legs everywhere as you start. But they also didn’t have people sorted out either, so the person next to you could be a male or female and could be from any age group. I sort of rate how the triathlon went by how many people I pass or how many people pass me. The swimming is not my best event. I am a way better swimmer than the average person, but I am a below average swimmer for being a triathlete. But I don’t consider myself a triathlete. I am a soccer player who competes in triathlons. I passed a couple people in the swim, but also got passed probably just as much.
The bike course was only 12 miles. I was hoping to average 20 miles per hour, I came up a bit short. I considered it a pretty hilly course, not that there were any huge hills just a lot of hills in general. There were only one or two hills where I had to stand to get over them. This is not an excuse because even though you have to pedal up the hill you do get the opportunity to make up the time on the downside of the hill. I thought I did amazingly well on the bike despite the hilly course. I think I got passed 3 times, and I would estimate that I easily passed over 100 people. The funny thing is that people at these events take it so seriously. Get over yourselves. Earlier in the week I headed to the mall to buy a bike helmet as I had always been borrowing one in the past. As I was picking out a helmet, I noticed that they had the old fashioned bells for kid’s bikes right there. I couldn’t resist and had to buy it. Here is an image that happened a number of times during the race. I would come up behind someone with a bike that was well over $2,000, all tricked out with the profile bars, new style frame, aerodynamic bike helmet, I would go cruising by them on my bike which Tree gave me a couple years ago and is around 15 years old, and ring my bell. Of course I have a big smile on my face. And normally when I passed someone I would read there bib number which was marked on their leg and encourage them. Something like “Come on 1078 we got this hill. Let’s go.” Then I would ring my bell and take off. These people would just look at me with a facial expression of “Who the hell is this guy?”. Well I thought it was funny anyhow.
One of my goals was to win one of the events. Who am I kidding, I am not going to win the swim, the bike or the run. So what is left….the transition times. The transition between the swim and the bike is a hard one to do well in just because of the switching to shoes and getting everything on. I set my sights on the second transition between the bike and run. You throw your bike on the rack, toss the helmet and you are on your way. I did some planning on this one. At the end of the bike course you have to dismount your bike and then run about 200 feet to the start of the transition area. They have mats placed down that you run across which registers your timing chip around your ankle. I ran up to the mat and stopped and just stood there for about 20 seconds catching my breath. They had a race official standing right there. He said to me, “What are you doing?” I said, “Catching my breath so I can win the transition time.” He just shook his head. If you look in the results, it almost worked, I believe I had the third fastest transition time (1 minute 12 seconds. The best was 1 minute 5 seconds).
Looking back at my strategy of trying to get the best transition time, I don’t think that helped my overall time. I ran at around a 70 or 80 percent sprint through the transition area. This took a lot of energy out of me, and as I started out on the running course I was just dead. I had nothing in the tank for the run. Going all out in the bike probably didn’t help me much in conserving energy. This is were I was very disappointed with my performance. I finished with a 5K time or 27 minutes 58 seconds. 6 minutes off the pace I had set for myself. It wasn’t the worst run I have been on. It was a gradual uphill course for the first mile, then there was a pretty steep hill to the halfway point. The rest was fairly all down hill. My first mile was probably over 10 minutes.
Here are my official times, 8:50 for the swim, 40:23 for the bike, 17.83 miles per hour pace, 27:58 for the 5K run, 9:20 minute mile pace.
Overall I did pretty well. Out of 302 competitors, I finished 43. Out of 140 males I was 36. If you check all of the times, I did have the 3rd fastest transition time. In my age group I was 8th out of 26. That was one goal I did have for myself was to finish in the top 10 of my age group.
This triathlon has me at a bit of a cross roads. I told myself this was going to be my last triathlon for the summer. But I am so disappointed in myself over that run time that I want to do another one. Not to mention that a more respectable run time would get me very close to actually placing in one of these races. If I shave off 1 minute in the water and hit my target 5K time, I finish in the top 3. I doubt that I will ever get too serious about doing these things to not joke around while doing them. Then again, my high placement might just be a product of a poor field.

As I emerged from the water there are other racers around me, they had two race officials in the water that sort of directed you out of the water. I asked them as I was getting out, “Am I winning? How far behind me is the person in second place?” They just laughed and said “Yep, you are in the lead and you have plenty of time, they are way behind you.” As you can see from the picture there are people ahead of me.
Here I am coming into the finish.The feeling of finishing. Tree by the way didn't run the race. He had been having back problems and is saving himself for the Stu on Stu tourney and the Paddle / Portage. But as we were walking to breakfast afterwards, he mentioned to me that his back really wasn't feeling too bad that morning.