Friday, April 22, 2011

First Triathlon!

I finally completed my first triathlon, the Lonestar Sprint in Galveston, TX!


Swim!
I have been working on learning to swim since November. When I started, I was struggling with half a pool length. Now thanks to Coach Melanie and working over the winter I was actually able to swim the open water 500 yards!
I did not do as well as I had hoped, I think I lost focus and had my head up way too much. But at least I got through it! Swim time: 19:11, rank 508 out of 556. I put in way too much energy and was not feeling good about it when I got out of the water.

I ran up to the wetsuit strippers, the guy was counting to three as I laid there waiting on him to pull... just pull it dude! LOL I was out of breath on the way back to transition so I ended up walking. T1 time: 4:52.

Bike!
I hit the bike hard, passing several people as they were trying to get clipped in right off the bat.
There was a full headwind on the way out to the Galveston seawall, with some rough roads and a no passing zone in there too. Once I hit the seawall, it was a crosswind from the water. Then I started passing people. :) I got past quite a few from my swim wave, and even some folks with 20's on their calf. Sweet! I caught just a little bit of a tailwind on the way in too.
Bike was much better than the swim, but that is the sport I have been doing the longest too. Bike time was 45:15 for a 16.6 mph average. 290th place, almost middle!

I somehow had a super quick T2 of 1:58, and that was even with having to turn around after a couple of steps to grab the Garmin off the bike. Then I forgot to start it right when started running, oh well!

Run!
I must have started the run WAY too fast. I am not sure what happened there even. I could not maintain my intervals during the run, ended up walking more than planned. But I still PR'd the 5K in 31:09 for a 9:59 pace! 413th overall.
I ended up 48 out of 55 for my age group with an overall time of 1:42:22. The first thing Donna asks me is whether or not I am ready to do another one. I told her to ask me after a few days. Just not sure if I liked swimming enough to keep at it to do another one. Since then I have been working on getting more efficient in the water, and I think I will like it better as I get better. We'll see! I will post more on some swim stuff I have been looking into.



Darren

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