This sprint tri (1/4 mile swim, 14 mile bike, 4.3 mile run) happened this morning in and around Beaver Lake, in Issaquah, WA, about 20 miles east of Seattle. See http://www.beaverlake.org/blt for more general info. The winning times for this race have generally been 1:07 - 1:10.

I had done the bike and run legs of this tri in 2003 and 2004 as a team with my daughter, who was a competitive swimmer on her high school swim team. This was the first year I did all three, and was my first complete tri. Official results are not available yet so far as I know, but I thought I would do this now while the pain was still fresh

I had never done any swimming at all until May of this year, when I took a 6-lession series from a local Total Immersion coach. I swam a 1/4 mile for the first time 3 days ago in a pool in 8:30. Today was the second time, and my HRM hand timing was a hair over 9 minutes. I didn't sight the first turn marker float frequently enough and got a bit off course in the first leg of the triangular course amidst the chaos, which cost me a little bit.

The bike leg is tough, with one big downhill (I hit 47 MPH), followed by a flat section then 2 miles of hills in the middle of the course, most of them in a series of stairsteps at 8-11% grade, for a total climb of just over 1000 feet according to my bike computer. If my timing is close to correct I did a PR at 42 minutes. I held back a bit in the last 2 miles to try and save my legs a bit, since I have a regular road bike, not a tri-specific model.

The run leg was flat to rolling, and ugly, at least for me. I haven't run enough this year (spending more time swimming or biking a lot), and it showed - while I picked up the pace in the second half of th run, I had my run leg time at 39:30, and total race time at 1:36.

Now it's just a small matter of recovering for next weekend's Lake Sammamish sprint tri.

Chris