This weekend I competed in a local triathlon in my hometown. The race slogan is “To Finish Is to Win”, which turned out to be very fitting. My sole goal for this race was to finish. When I first started considering this race a few months ago, I had loftier, specific goals and times I wanted to meet – yet as the race got closer I realized those were not safely achievable (as in, I would have to overtrain and hurt myself). Taking the advice of others, I modified my gameplan and just concentrated on having fun, and finishing, which I did!

This race was unique in that it was a reverse (slightly short) sprint. 5K run followed by a 6 mile (very flat) bike followed by 400M in the pool. I have run this running course more times than I can count back in the day, but it’s been over 6 years since the last time I ran it. It’s a relatively flat course with the exception of a monster hill right at mile 2. I did something which I have never done before on this course – I walked the hill. This gave me a good little recovery in the middle on the run, and I didn’t wear myself out by running up the hill. My official split for the run was 29:47 (confirmed by my Garmin).

I was extremely pleased with this time, and to be honest, quite surprised. My strategy during the race was to run a slow comfortable pace, and I was able to keep it up. I was able to easily tell (without even looking at my watch) that I was keeping my pace down as I had a pack of 6 year olds running in front of me for the first mile :) That was definitely a new experience for me, but quite amusing and they trucked along and did quite well! But I was glad to get that leg over with, and my time was great considering the longest I had run in training for this was 2.4 miles with a fastest average mile of around 10:30 (and those had no walking). Guess a little competition and running a nice wooded course as opposed to sucking in fumes of cars along Piedmont Road provides a nice speed boost!

After completing the run I walked through transition to the bike. It only took about a minute to get from the finish of the run to the mount line for the bike. And then I was off.

It started sprinkling as I started on the bike, but it provided much needed relief more than anything else. Surprisingly, I wasn’t passed by too many people on this leg! I’ve been doing my training rides (inside, on a trainer, with air conditioning of course :)) about ~16mph, and my average pace for the race was 16.2mph. The one negative was that my cadence stayed rather low (68), however, I was very pleased with the bike leg. I started on the bike right behind with one runner I finished with, however, found he was too fast for me. Another rider passed me within the first mile and I was able to stay with her for the remainder of the bike. I’m glad I picked someone and just tried to stay with them as it helped me keep a constant good speed.

Next up came the swim. I wasn’t too worried about this leg – but perhaps I should have been considering I have only swam once (at the Mock Triathlon a few months ago) in the past 6 years! I completed this leg right around 9:30 which I was pleased with. As soon as I got in the water I started noticing a sharp pain in only my right arm and had no clue what had caused it. After the race when I was trying to figure it out I recalled that last weekend I had been playing paintball for several hours, and got shot in the right arm at close range a few times. Mystery solved!

My total time came out to be just over 1:04 – it would have been cool to be under an hour but oh well! I was just glad to be finished. The race was a blast and I definitely had fun so will be doing more of these in the future! I’m glad I picked a hometown race to do first as that made things a bit easier!