Finally First Triathlon Completed
 

I did my first sprint tri today. it was definitely a rough day at the office. first off i realized that i was most likely the largest guy there today and i noticed a couple of questionable clydes as well. i say that because they kicked my butt..... BAD :lol: The race consisted of a 300 yard swim in the pool, 9 mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run. i will not have the exact numbers till Thursday of my exact times. The swim went so so. i ended up having to swim through a log jam. then the guy that was in front of me was holding me up but from over taking so many people left me a bit beat up so i stayed in his wake. finished the swim in about 6:45 which is a minute slower than what i would have normally swam.

The bike went good but not great. the temp was in the 50's. i usually perform much better when its 65 and above. i did learn one valuable lesson. it didn't click why it is recommended to put some Vaseline on the tip of the saddle. turns out that since i forgot that bit of advise, every time i stood out of the saddle to climb it was like my tri suit was sandpaper and the seat nose wanted to grab my suit off. the 9 miles went good, passed a bunch of people and ate both gels i taped to the top tube. the one bit of advise i actually listened to is tape the gel to the top tube so you can rip the top off and you won't have to use your teeth. i finished in 29 minutes. not horrible for not riding the course until today. so i am still happy but a bit beat up still.

The run is where everything went bad. OK not really. my standards may be a bit too high for this early in the cycling season. i was expecting to do the run in 36 minutes. it resulted in 42 minutes. i was spent in the run so i ended up instead of the sustained run i expected, to a constant walk run. my motivation to keep trying to run the next section was that i passed fellow clydes and wanted to be sure they didn't pass me back.

i do not know my exact time i crossed the finish line but was about an hour and 20 minutes or less. i was shooting for sub hour ten minutes. i think the first place Clyde finished right around sub 1 hour. i think i ended up finishing 14th in my division and around 140th place over all out of a couple hundred people. only winning is fun, but i still had a great time today so I'm happy.

That is great. That bike time is over 18.5 miles per hour. :thumb: There is no way to know how difficult those transitions are until you have done them. Great Job!!!!

+1 . what a difference it is during competition with all the chaos.

Great job. Which tri did you do? I am doing my first tri in July, the sprint in Winchendon. I just got my klein bike but plan on riding the tri route twice this month and then at least once a week up until the event. Doing any other tri's this summer? I registered as a newbie rather then a clydesdale so I can start with a few friends doing the tri. How bad is the bricking?

On my ride today there was a Tri going on, I didn't realize you can register as a Clyde. There were a bunch of clydes and athenas.

i did the Ludlow, Ma Sheriff Sprint Pool Triathlon/Duathlon. so there was 2 events running at the same time. i totally plan on doing at least 1 or 2 more tri's this year maybe one in july. i say 1 or 2 because i plan on doing some bike racing too. i had a great time so i have to do more. i wont be happy till i win my or a division. the chaos of the swim made the transitions much harder than they had to be. it was a hurry up and wait because when you sign up they made you approximate your swim time so that only faster people are in front of you. when a log jam happens and everybody bunches up because of someone slower, you are not swimming smoothly. now you are slowing down then accelarating so you can pass, rinse and repeat. i didnt feel like i swam 6 laps, i felt like i swam over a quarter of a mile. most of my training over the last 3 months was not just work on one sport then another, most of it was bricks. so i always made sure i match up a run with a bike or a swim with a run etc. otherwise you end up with wobbly legs and the first time i went from a big swim in the pool then hopped on the treadmill i almost fell off a few times. my friends followed with :roflmao2: My advise as a first timer would be to expect to be much more drained than doing the same distances solo. i did a good job of racing my own race, but the swim affected me for the rest of the race because of the extra efforts i ended up putting in.