I officially did my first Triathlon

So, my first Tri, I'm pretty happy that I did it, although it wasn't the same distance of the one I will be doing in Disney in September. This is a sprint, which is usually half of what I'm expected to do in September.

The Port Republic Genesis Sprint Triathlon was held on Saturday 28 2007 starting at 8 AM. The weather was hot and muggy, but the water was warm. I finished in the back of the pack, 203 place out of 254 people, so this was not a Rocky-esque story of training to beat the champ or in this case come in the top twenty. I made some very rookie mistakes, most notably my swimming.

The race start is done in waves, where age groups go in five minute sequences. Since I was in the prime age group of 30-39 (well this year anyway) we started first. At the sound of the horn we strode quickly in and dived when it was deep enough, and off we go. We were supposed to follow a set of buoys to the end and circle around and come back the same way. Well, we did, minus me. Hence rookie mistake number 1.

The group went generally left following the buoys, me, well, I kept my head down and heartily swam to the right. Only when did the guy in the canoe yell "YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY" did I poke my head up. Well, nothing like adding about 4 minutes to your time to correct your mistakes. The more embarrassing part was the fact that the waves which didn't start were passing me at a fairly good clip. So, in short, I'm going to double up on my swimming practice to improve my rather tepid pace. And I used to be on the swim team in high school.

Lesson learned: Get your head up out of the water once in a while to see where you're going.

So 19 minutes and 22 seconds later I came out of the water and ran up the beach. I got on my shirt and sneakers, sucked down some Gatorade and off I went. What became evident fairly early on is that I have decent leg power but my seat was a bit lower than it needed to be, which made it harder to go fast. Rookie mistake #2. Make sure you're biking equipment is set up properly. 16 miles and 50 minutes later I was in the second transition to the run.

As a side note, I was using my sneakers on my bike with pedals with foot cages . Many of the more serious racers had separate bike shoes which clipped into the pedals which generate more power with less effort. Optional rookie mistake 2.a: I gotta get me some of these.

The final leg of this was a 4 mile run. Now on most days a 4 mile run is no big deal for me, I can do it. Well, after 1 hour and 15 minutes of constant exercise, what was easy, well not so much anymore. I pushed myself in my normal pace in the beginning and was sucking wind by the first mile. Only when I was starting to see God did I remember that someone told me to start slow and finish strong, so I can finish in the first place. Plus, it was now about 90 degrees and blazing sun. Rookie Mistake #3, don't kill yourself to the point where you can't finish. Dial it down to where you can manage forward progression.

Total time to finish my first Tri 1:49.25. Someone said for a first time that was very good. Well, to be honest, I'm competitive. I am already planning what I want to do in my next one. I can easily achieve 189th place the next time.

It's Sunday and I'm taking it easy. I wanted to swim today but the pool wasn't open. Damn kids today, no sense of responsibility. I'm only assuming they didn't show up because of the torrential downpour that soaked the Tri-State area.

You can find my results here..remember 203rd place, way down on the bottom:
My Tri results

Remember to keep on donating, I'm almost at 1000.00 dollars now only 9k more to go:
My Team in Training Donation Page