My first triathlon of the year was this past Sunday in rainy/wet 45 degree weather! The swim was indoors with an 82 degree water temp, I was conservative on the swim as I did not want to overly tax myself for the remainder of the race. I’m obviously leaner than I was a year ago because my tri top fit loose around the torso and acted as a parachute through the water. I managed to pass a couple people and only got passed by one (1) person who happened to be a female. At the end of last season I was swimming 300 meters in under 5:00 minutes so I could easily shave a minute off my time from yesterday.
My body nearly went into shock running out the door to T1! I had a thermal long sleeve jersey and wind vest with me to put on for the bike, but no one else was taking the time to do so, so I jumped on and froze for the first mile or so. The bike leg was cut short to one (1) loop (6.4 miles) due to the rainy conditions. I had the 20th fastest bike split overall at 20.3 MPH which was only 1 MPH slower than the guys that won the overall, not bad considering I’m still rolling the stock Shimano R-501’s while their wheelsets cost more than my entire bike! I probably could have averaged around 22 MPH in dry conditions, but I did not get passed on the bike so I knew I must have pushed it pretty hard. That was my first time riding in the rain which is quite nerve racking…I took some chances on a few corners!
I then managed to set a new PR on the 5k run finishing in 22:26 (7:14 min/mile) and feel as though I left something on the course.
To my surprise, I finished in 4th place in my Age Group (out of 38) and 39th overall out of 381 men. I was only 11 seconds behind 3rd place who happened to beat me by :42 seconds in transition alone. If only I'd have known I was that competitive, I may have hurried along a little quicker through transition.
Overall, I’m extremely pleased with my results for the inaugural race of the season and have identified several opportunities for improvement (ie. transitions).
My next race is in a month and is an open water swim requiring wetsuits….let the panic attacks begin!
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