Stow Triathlon

Ready to Race! 

A bunch of Team in Training triathletes came out today to race in the spring "kickoff." It is a fun little race, very laid back! The swim course is a short one at 500 meters and the run and bike are relatively flat.

I had an okay swim this morning, not as fast as I had hoped for. I would have liked to swim 7 or under but ended up with 9:06 on the swim, about a minute slower than last year.

Transition wasn't great but not horrible at 2:30.

I had a good bike ride and only got passed by about 3 women. Of course I only passed 1 or 2 so I pretty much stayed even from the swim through the bike. A and S were right behind me in T1 and throughout the bike ride but I sneaked in to T2 just ahead. The bike course was just shy of 12 miles and it took me 37:24.

I was in T2 for 1:16 and then it was on to the run!

At this point it was pretty hot. I dumped a small bit of water over my head and started trying to catch a few women just ahead of me. I took down 2 or 3 women right away on the run then pretty much stayed even the rest of the way. I got passed by a 41 year old woman towards the finish but didn't feel up to racing her in. My legs felt like CRAP! But I ran pretty well considering the heat and ground conditions. The majority of the run is on gravel.

Splits on the run were 7:19.47, 7:16.91, and 8:14.91 for the last 1.1 miles. So probably about 45 seconds on the .1 and 7:30 for the last mile.

Total time was 1:13:07. 8 minutes faster than last year. Mostly due to the bike but I had a really good run today as well.

There were definitely some more competitive athletes out there this year. As last year my time would have gotten me 3rd overall. This year it was good enough for 1st in my age group and around 6th-8th overall.

I went sans socks and gloves today. The lack of gloves on the bike didn't bother me, but I got some nice blisters from wearing no socks. I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if I would have thought to put body glide on my feet.

Everyone from TNT did great! I think they all enjoyed their first tri experience!

Big thanks to B for the pictures!