This morning I got there and found out that they had put me as the first swimmer in the water in this Interval start triathlon. I told them 4:30 was my seed time which was a little aggressive cause I ended up doing it in 5:00.
I made three errors in this tri and the first one was pretty minor, but cost me a couple seconds is all: When I jumped in feet first (per the direction given me), I went to the bottom which was only about 7 feet deep. I tried pushing off the wall, but I was at the bottom and the walkway barrier thing didn't go all the way to the bottom, so when I pushed off the wall, there was no wall to push off, so needless to say the guy behind me was right on my tail from the start. After 300 yards he touched my toes and I let him pass me. Then at 350 I thought he was getting out and I didn't really think it through, so I ran into him. Not bad at all, but he stopped for a sec and looked at me. I said sorry at transition and told him I thought we were getting out right there next to the door. Instead we got out on the far end of the pool and had to walk over to the exit door.
At transition I simply put on my jersey, shades and helmet and took off. I passed the guy in transition and immediately made my way on the bike course. I was going at a very good pace and every 10 minutes or so I looked back and didn't see a soul, so my biking was good. At the very last turn, I wasn't absolutely sure it was the right turn. There were some race volunteers there at the corner helping people just starting to make the right turn. I wasn't sure if I needed to go one more block or turn here so I yelled out: Do I turn here to go back? They said "we don't know they didn't tell us". I didn't see any arrows painted so I kept going. After a block I still didn't see any arrows so I cut in and made my way back to the route. I wasted probably 1 minute or so off my time trying to figure out how to get back. So that was my second error. It was annoying.
I looked back and there was a fairly good pack behind me about 200 yards. My GPS shows my stats as:
Distance: 13.4 miles
Time: 36:30
Average Speed: 22.03 mph
When I transitioned to the run I hurried to get my socks and shoes on and then my race belt and took off. I ran south to 400 S when the guy behind me yelled out: "Dude! We're going the wrong way". Just then I realized that the run course went around behind the building instead of straight to the road. I must have passed nearly a dozen volunteers right there at transition who saw me and didn't say a thing. I wasted about 1 minute on that one too. I was tired at the start of the run and my calves felt a little tight, but not too bad. My pace to start wasn't good at all, but slowly it picked up. We had to head North to Pages lane, then east to 400 E and then south to 400 S. There was a slight uphill grade for the second half and it was tough. Coming down 4th south at the end was nice as it was downhill. I was passed only twice by runners (besides the 5 that didn't screw up the run transition and were already ahead to begin with). My run time was about 26 minutes.
My overall time was 1:11:35. I wanted less than 1:15 so I at least did that. But was hoping for close to a little over an hour. I took 8th place out of about 100 or so people. If I didn't make those errors I would have got down to around low 1:10. And probably placed in the top 3. Before my second error I was ahead by probably a couple minutes. Triathlons are a great deal about mental focus at transition times especially and I goofed up big time on this race.
I'm a little bugged that the race volunteers didn't know the course to help doofus' like me. I also thought the 2nd watering station was very badly placed (only about 300 yards from the finish line). Why not put it 300 yards into the run! Not just before finish when people are sprinting and not going to stop/slow down for a drink!
I'll probably skip this race next year. Sprints are too short. Especially when the swim is half of what it should be. Sprints are typically half of an olympic distance and an olympic distance is 1500 M which should be about an 800 yard swim for sprint distance, not 400. That takes a little away from my advantage. Oh well. I got a good workout today anyway, and plan to go for a 50 mile bike ride later this afternoon, as well as taking Jacob on a 3 mile run at sundown.
Next up... Utah Summer Games. Time to get in the pool!
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