My First (Olympic) Tri

Alright, let's do the rewind bit again. This time, go back about 7 days to Sunday morning. Long before I put 4 stitches and a deep gash in my thumb. Several hours before my blog entry that week; hell, before most people were even up that day, I was standing waist deep in "freezing" water. Okay, the water was probably about 78 degrees, but for someone used to temperature in the mid 80's, 78 is chilly. I'm on the far right of the pic with a silver swim cap. It was right around this time when I found out about 40 of the people in the water were doing a Sprint distance triathlon, and only 10 of us were doing the Olympic distance tri. I was a little nervous with such a small field of competitors, but my main goal was just to finish.

A little bit after 6:30 the buzzer/horn went off and we were swimming...2 laps (750M) for the Sprint Triathletes, and 4 laps (1500M) for the Olympic distance triathletes. The picture below shows me taking a much needed breath as I struggled to round one of the buoys. I'll be honest, the 1500M swim was a little bit slower than I had anticipated. That is probably due to two factors. One, I haven't swam since my last triathlon which was the 3rd race in the Sprint Tri Series in July 2010 (check out the blog HERE). Not only did my lack of swimming play a factor in the slower time, but the tide did a number on all us. It seemed that for most of the swim I was fighting the current one way or another. after my 3rd lap of swimming, I pretty much figured that I was the last person in the water. Sure enough all of the 750M swimmers were out of the water, but there were actually a few 1500M swimmers behind me. It wasn't a huge lead by any means, and I took little satisfaction out of it, as my first Olympic distance triathlon was a race against myself more than anyone else. Most importantly as swimming is far from my strong point, I was just glad to be done with the water. Total time recorded for the swim was: 32 minutes, 57 seconds.

I didn't exactly rush through the transition from swim to bike knowing that I had 40 Km (~24 miles ahead of me), but I wasn't strolling either. The picture below is my finishing one of the six laps. What you probably can't tell is that there is a water bottle duct taped to the front of my bike. I had inserted a straw into the bottle so I could drink without leaving the "aero" position (a homemade version of this), but I wasn't counting on the bumpy road. Shortly after reaching the half way point of lap 1, my straw bounced out of my bottle, and I was left with no way of drinking my Gatorade/water mix. It didn't really matter...most of it splashed out as I seemed to hit every bump in the road. Total time for the bike ride: 1 hour, 11 minutes, 48 seconds.

My legs felt like lead. I was tired and a little dehydrated, but before I could call it quits, I had to run 10km (6.2 miles). My only real goal was to finish at this point. I wasn't quite sure how many people were in front of me or behind me, and I really didn't care.

45 minutes, 38 seconds after starting the 10K I was done...my total time was 2 hours, 30 minutes, 23 seconds. I ended up placing 4th overall, not bad for a first time, but more than anything I was glad I finished.

Here I am almost done, and the prize for finishing was better than any t-shirt or medal...a ridiculously big breakfast at Denny's. I am sure I replenished every calorie burned with their famous "Scrambler," but it was good, I was tired, and I totally earned it.