I finished my first Triathlon and to my surprise I finished in 4th place overall. The first event was the run (this is a reverse Trialthon) where the Run is first then the Bike then finally the Swim. I really didn't get a good warm-up for the run because I slept in this morning because I was so tired from this work week. Last night I got up about 4 times to go to the bathroom (too much caffeine pop yesterday), and really didn't sleep well. It I would have slept the whole time I would have got 9 hours, because I went to bed early. The first mile in the race I took conservavtive because I didn't know how I would feel in the bike transition. I started out in 4th place just comfortable, and I was trying to get used to running in Tri shorts with a pad. This was different with the shorts being longer. Then I picked it up and past the third/second place runner. I messed up on my Garmin so I don't know the splits. The first place guy was a 19 year old track guy and I was starting to reel him in when we hit the third mile. At the Bike transition I went in the wrong way and ran an extra 200 meters, because I didn't hear the instructions right at the beginning of the race. I thought the race director said to take the second entrance into the park bike transition, but I was suppose to take the first. I did finish in 16:07. In the bike stage I got past by two biker's, and they past the first place guy in the running stage (this is a 12.2 mile course). Now I'm still learning and I don't have the fancy shoes or pedals I just used my running shoes. I was riding real well and was pretty close to the leaders. On the second to last mile I noticed my tire was getting low (I ended up getting a flat), but I manage to past the guy that fininshed in first on the run so I was now in 3rd place overall. I finished the course in 34:23. I also messed up on the Bike transition where I got off right after the cones entering the swim area where I could have road another 200 meters, and lost valuable time where the 4th place guy caught up to me. Then I had to run back to my bike, because I forgot to take my shoes off so this put me in fourth place. The swim went fine I did it in 23 minutes and didn't lose my position at all, and I could have kept going and wasn't really tired. I needed to do more swimming to get better technique. Because I only did four training sessions. All in all a good experience and I learned from my transition mess-ups, but it was for fun. I didn't go as hard in the run as I could of because of not knowing. Next time I would go all out 5k pace in the run. Afterwards I ran 6.32 miles at a 6:36 pace in 41:41 minutes home. My wife and everyone else thought I was nuts to want to run again. This tells me that my fitness is in great shape for the marathon on August 30th.
I'm going to convert the 12 bike miles to 4 mile run miles, because you really do use your legs hard in a race. |