Anyways, I participated in the Sobe Mossman Sprint Triathlon which was a 1/2 mile swim, 12.5 mile bike and a 5K.
My Tri Swim Cap
Overall, It went ok. Very, very painful swim for both mental and physical reasons. Growing up in Montana, I never had the chance to establish my "sea-legs" in my youth. Going to college in Manhattan also left me city bound for a large chunk of my life. In other words, I'm not the strongest of swimmers and as you'll learn further down, I didn't quite get to the endurance building portion of my training regimen. So, going into the event, my longest continuos training swim was 150m, not quite ideal preparations for a 800m competition. To add to the joy, my training pool is only 15m, so I have a whole lot of turning in my training. (since I cannot do flip turns, its a lot of standing up and turning around) All of the above led to a "fragile" psyche prior to the event. And when I saw the course, which was basically 1/2 mile in a straight line along the beach, I convinced myself it was a long, long way. So I basically lost the mental battle with myself (and the ocean) and spend a huge majority of the swim doing the side stroke, or floating on my back. I was disappointed with myself for losing this battle, however, I finished the race so I guess I won the war ?
The bike was supposed to be my saving grace, it was not quite a walk in the park, however, the bike went much, much better. Due to shortened training, I had very, very tired legs. I didn't ever, swim then get on a bike during training, so I was a little unprepared for how I would feel coming out of the water. The truly annoying part of my bike leg was I had 2 mechanical issues which slowed me down. A crank bolt was coming loose allowing some play in between the two crank arms, thus also allowing my chainrings to move further away from the bike frame. This stopped me from shifting into my big-chainring, which was quite a disadvantage on a flat road course. I stopped once to fix it, about 1/2 way through the first lap (the course was 2 loops of a 6.26 mi course) which worked for about 6 miles, so halfway through my second lap, I had to dismount and tighten the bolt again. All I can say is that I am very, very glad I decided to toss my multi-tool in my jersey pocket...I was close to saying, "Its race day, I don't need to bring my tools!."
I guess this might make up for not doing a proper gear check the night before the race....ah well, another lessoned learned.
The run, was ok. Had to walk more than I would have liked. I suspect this is, (again), also strangely related to my light training load prior to the event. On the positive side, I only had to walk on the first half of the run, but was able to run from the halfway point forward until the end.
In the big picture of things, it was good. I accomplished my 2 major goals for the event, #1 finishing and #2 finishing in under 2 hours.
Here are the Official Results.
You'll have to scroll a ways down to find me. It might be quicker just to search (cntl-f) for me.
Now that I have a time, I can continue training and try to beat it.
I learned a few very important lessons. Specifically, when doing a multi-phased training program (base building, endurance building, and then peaking into the event) It is not very helpful to trim 12 week training program down to 4 weeks of training (leaving out the Endurance building portion). Given that I only did the first 4 weeks of the training program (and the fourth week I did the taper portion). But base building is not the same thing as endurance building!!
I also learned 4 weeks of training is much better than 15 days (what I had for my Duathlon this past march)
now I'm tempted to complete my training schedule and find a late August or September triathlon to give it another go.
