On Sunday morning, Dharmaspoon Gal and I got up at 4am, pottied the dogs, and headed out for the last (and my first) triathlon of the season. This was a true “sprint”, which means it is half the distance of an Olympic version. That translates into .5 mi swim, 12 mi bike ride, 3.1 mi run.
The first thing you do when you get onsite is you get your registration materials and body marked with your race number and age. Then it’s off to set up your transition area. This is where you rack your bike and lay out your swim, bike, and run gear. There is somewhat of an art to setting things up so that you have access to everything you need when you need it. You also need to memorize how to find your area, even when your bike isn’t there. In a triathlon, you start in the water and do your swim. After the swim, you run to your transition area, get into your bike gear, and head off to your bike ride. When you’re back from biking, you return one last time and switch to running hear. The amount of time you spend here counts against your total, so you want to do this as quickly as possible. Which is difficult, because sometimes you want to take a nap. Here is what my transition area looked like at about 5 in the morning, prior to the race:
After I get set up, and use the port-a-john, and get back in line and use the port-a-john again, one of my favorite things to do is watch the sun rise over the water where I’ll be swimming while I stress out about whether or not the swim will be “wetsuit legal.” If the water is under a certain temperature, you are able to wear a wetsuit, which, for a crappy swimmer like me, provides an advantage in terms of extra buoyancy. If you know what you’re doing in the water, it may actually slow you down.
The swim at a triathlon is an interesting experience. I saw an ad on TV once where they were helping someone train for a triathlon and they were simulating the swim by beating the guy with paddles as he tried to swim in a lake. That’s pretty much what it’s like as people kick you in the head, swim over you, your goggles fill up with fog/water and you have to stop all the time to make sure you’re still going in the right direction. Oh, and many people choose to relieve themselves right before the swim. In the water. Right next to you. I hate the swim. The swim is the most challenging leg for me. It does however serve as a great warm-up for the rest of the event and does not tire you out too much. On Sunday, I did as well as I ever do on the swim, maybe a little better. Took about 19 minutes and had the 9th fastest time in my age group. The top swimmers made it out in 12 minutes or so. For this triathlon, that included a group of middle-school children. The really good swimmers usually suck at the rest of the event, so after the swim, you look forward to passing them all on the bike portion of the race. We call this “fishing.”
The bike course was a nice rolling course with a couple of very tight turns. For better or worse, you can actually shave minutes off of your time just by paying money for a really expensive bike. The more you spend, the more you can shave off. The people with the most money have bikes with disk wheels that make a characteristic droning noise as they pass you. That sound also gives you time to drop tacks in the road right behind you, causing them to spin out of control and off the race course.
I have a middle-of-the-road tri-bike myself, and was pleased to blow past a number of people with custom made bikes several times more expensive than mine.
I ride a single speed to work every day and have to negotiate a number of steep hills without the ability to shift gears, so that really pays of when I hit the hills and can shift gears.
After the bike, it’s time for the run. For the first mile, your legs feel like bricks because the muscles have to get used to the transition from biking to running (the blood has to redistribute itself). Was feeling pretty good at this point and passed quite a few people. The racers all have their ages written on their legs, so you can see if it’s worth passing the person in front of you.
Finally, it’s time to finish. What’s nice about a sprint triathlon is that usually by the time you start to wonder why you’re putting yourself through all of this, you’re done.
I ended up finishing 7/33 in my age group, 42nd overall out of over 300. What I am most proud of is that Dharmaspoon Gal finished 3rd in her age group and got herself a nice liquid prize:
Looking forward to doing it all again next season.
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