Patriot Sprint Triathlon - Race Report!

There were a lot of "firsts" for me in this race:

• First open water swim
• First swim race
• First time swimming in jammers and a swim cap
• First bike race
• First swim-to-bike transition
• First triathlon

The race report is very long, so here's the important stuff for those of you who don't want to read everything. FYI I was in the Novice group, so the number in parenthesis is my rank in that group (out of 38):

Swim: 20:43 (7)
T1: 5:24 (21)
Bike: 41:14 (12)
T2: 0:57 (2)
Run: 30:01 (28)
Total: 1:38:17 (9)

And if I had to sum up how I felt after the race in one .gif:

Starting at the beginning: I picked up my race packet on Saturday and scoped out the course. The transition area is a LONG way away from the beach (1/4 mile, to be exact). Here's the route from the beach:

From there you go up a small hill and head towards the transition area (you can see the tents in the distance):

No worries, I thought, it will just be a nice cool-down jog after the swim. More on that later.

When I went to bed that night it was raining, and when I woke up at 3:30 it was still coming down. I slowly had some coffee and peanut butter toast and the rain stopped sometime around 4:30. I packed the rest of my gear, threw it in the car and drove the 30 minutes to Williamsburg. I was one of the first people there at 5:30, so I had first pick of the bike rack:

Since I had time to spare I spent about 10 minutes over-analyzing my transition space and the most efficient way to place everything. I also went over everything I would need to do in transition in my head. I had body-markers write my race number on my arms after that, and then hit up the porta-potties, and here's what I wrote on Facebook about that:

So I go to use the bathroom before the race, and I see that the handicapped porta-potty (extra large) is available. I think to myself "Excellent, I shall poop like a King!" There are no lights so after sitting down I pull out my iPhone and use the Flashlight app to look around, and see that there's a huge spider in the corner directly above me, and now I'm sitting here wondering why bad things happen to good people.

My wonderful wife Briana arrived shortly after that with her sister Tara and father Wiley. After meeting with our friend Kate (whose dad Will was racing), we headed down to the beach and snapped some pre-race photos:

Can you tell I'm terrified?

Wiley is in the background photobombing me

The race was divided into 6 starting waves that launch 2 minutes apart, and I was in the 6th one, reserved for Novice Men and Women, and Relay teams. This had me a bit worried because I knew I was a weak swimmer and didn't want to be one of the last out of the water. The first wave went off with the airhorn:

All the other waves ahead of me came and went 2 minutes apart, and before I knew it it was time to get in the water and await the starting horn.

Me in the back warming up my arms

I positioned myself in the center in the back to allow everyone to get ahead and give me some room to swim. Suddenly the horn went off and my first triathlon had begun.

A lot of people walked in the shallow water for the first minute, but I immediately went horizontal and started swimming. The first hundred yards or so were uncoordinated because I was afraid of hitting the person in front of me, so I was awkwardly stroking while keeping my head above water to keep an eye on where I was going. Slowly the swimmers spread out and I had enough room to feel comfortable, and I settled into my normal long, slow strokes, switching to breaststroke every couple of minutes. I swam too close behind someone at one point and got kicked in the face, but it wasn't very hard and my goggles didn't become dislodged so I kept on swimming.

In the first few minutes I found myself passing several other people, and I didn't think much of it. But as I neared the turn-around buoy I started passing people wearing purple caps (from Wave 5). Shortly after that I was passing grey caps (Wave 4) as well, who had a 4 minute head start on me. I was a little winded but this energized me, so my swim strokes went from "slow and steady" to more like this:

Half-way back to shore I saw a swimmer floating on her back, and my abs were very sore at this point so I stopped and made sure she was okay. "Yep, just catching my breath" she said, and I swam on. Someone died at Ironman NYC last month and I didn't want to find out later that the same thing had happened here and I did nothing. The karma I felt pushed me the rest of the way until I was suddenly planting my feet in sand and erupting out of the water.

Swim: 20:43. We would later learn that the swim was actually about 1000m, not 750m, so this comes out to an average of 2:04/100m pace.

Bre almost didn't see me at first; she was looking farther out in the river and didn't expect me to finish so quickly until I popped out of the water. I was a little dizzy as I ran up the beach, but I noticed that there was only one other person from my wave nearby, and everyone else was from Wave 5 and 4. Holy shit, I might be near the front of my group, I thought as I sprinted up the beach (I would later learn that I came out of the water in 7th place for the Novices, and that the 6th and 5th place guys were only 15 seconds ahead of me). I forgot to start the timer on my watch when our swim started, so I tried doing quick math based on the current time but my head seemed cloudy and it was tough to think, so I just kept running towards transition.

I got into transition, spotted my bike and ran down one row... only to realize it wasn't my bike, and I was in the wrong place. I stood there confused for a moment before finding the correct spot. It truly is amazing how difficult it is to think when your brain is deprived of oxygen. Once I got to my bike I saw that my previous suspicions were correct: most of the bikes around me were still racked, so I was near the front of the group.

"Where the hell is my bike?"

Since it had rained all night the ground was wet and muddy, so transitioning was a bit tough. I squirted water on my feet and dried them off as best as I could, but putting on my toe-socks was still a challenge. I'm not sure what I'll do in the future, but Vibrams definitely aren't ideal for triathlons. 

My mind was still cloudy, but I managed to put on my heart rate monitor, helmet and sunglasses and head out on the bike. Before I got on my bike my heart rate was 198! No wonder I was so dizzy and confused: that heart rate is on the verge of me passing out. I guess I need to jog instead of sprint next time. Before the race I was debating whether or not to use my heart rate monitor, and I'm really glad I did.

Transition 1: 5:24. I was pretty pleased with this, since at least half of it was spent running to the transition area. When I get real bike shoes this will be a bit faster as well. I forgot to grab my shot-bloc chews, but they weren't crucial.

I took it easy for the first few minutes on the bike to allow my heart rate to get back down into the 170s. Most of the bike course was surrounded by woods, so there was never much wind except at the turn-around. There was one slight downhill in the first couple of miles, and aside from that it was pancake flat. It was a very easy course.

I've been in a lot of running races, and I've always felt like I was racing the distance rather than the other runners. This was nothing like that. I don't know if it was because I was near the front in my group, or because it was my first bike race, but the competitiveness in me kicked-in and I started hammering it. I immediately started picking off bikers one at a time: coast up behind them, pass on the left, then move back over to the right. There's a 2:00 penalty for taking more than 15 seconds to pass someone, so I couldn't just stay to the left and fly by everyone. Over the entire bike course I was only passed once (by Kate's dad Will, who I re-passed near the end), and I passed over 35 people. 

I was ignoring my speedometer and just focusing on the next person in front of me. I kept an eye on my heart rate, which was still a bit higher than I'm used to, but I felt good and kept hammering away. I had one bottle of gatorade with me and drank from that every 5 minutes. I got into a good rhythm passing one person after another, and the bike course seemed to go very quickly as a result. 

One thing that was challenging was traffic. They didn't fully close the bike course to cars, so there were several times where we had to weave in and out of traffic. Near the half-way mark there was a truck towing a boat, and as I passed him on the left he drifted a bit and almost hit me! At a few of the turns there were cars stopped waiting for the traffic cop to let them go, and one driver started to open his car door right as I flew by at 20mph, which gave me a bit of a scare. All of these cars caused the bikers to bunch up a bit too, which slowed everything down several times.

When I got near the end I slowed down a bit to keep my heart rate low for transition, but then I saw Wiley taking photos so I climbed out of my saddle and sprinted for the last 30 seconds.

Bike: 41:14. The bike course was long too (12.79 miles according to google maps), so this averages out to a 3:13/mile pace. Not what I had hoped, but I hadn't considered the logistics of traffic and having to pass people individually.

I had practiced the bike-to-run transition several times during training, but I hadn't considered having to run 100 yards from the dismount spot to the bike rack. When I got off the bike my legs felt like jelly, and it was a bit hard to run the bike back to the transition area. I quickly racked my bike, took off my helmet, and ran out of transition.

Transition 2: 0:57. Second fastest transition in my group, and the top person was only one second faster (0:56). Very pleased with this, though I had a nagging feeling I was forgetting something...

Here are the mile breakdowns for the run, and how I felt for each one.

• Mile 1: 10:30. "WHY DO MY LEGS HATE ME SO MUCH?"
• Mile 2: 10:09. "Okay, feeling a little better, but I'm still afraid to push it."
• Mile 3: 9:22. "FLASH, AHHHHHH, SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE"

The run was painful from the start: my heart rate was in the 190s again, my quads hurt, and my calves felt like they were on the brink of cramping. It was immediately obvious that a 5K PR was out of the question. I quickly changed my goal to try to run without walking at all, which I failed when I walked for 15 seconds through the water station at the Mile 1 marker. That short walk helped a lot though, and I felt a bit invigorated as I started running again.

Shortly after that a middle-aged black man with an Ironman tattoo on the back of his leg passed me. "Go Ironman!" I yelled, and he flashed me a thumbs-up. I chatted him up after the race and learned that he was in the 1983 Ironman Championships in Kona, Hawaii. 

I coasted along tentatively on my legs for a while, before suddenly realizing what I forgot in transition: my running bib. I had pre-attached them to a pair of running shorts (you can see them in the transition photo I took before the race) so all I needed to do was throw them on over my triathlon shorts, but I completely forgot. That's a 2 minute penalty, and it meant that they might not be able to identify me in some of the photos that the professionals took along the course. Damn! Every time I passed a race official I nervously hoped they wouldn't notice. 

When I passed the second mile marker I felt like I had finally "found my running legs", so I leaned forward and sped up. In training whenever I ran too hard my throat would start to close up and it would become difficult to breathe, and I ran as hard as I could without reaching that point. As we rounded the corner onto Jamestown road for the final half-mile the adrenaline kicked-in and I ran even faster. One spectator saw me running behind two women and yelled: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DON'T LET THOSE GIRLS BEAT YOU, PASS THEM!" I laughed and obliged him, saying "I'm sorry, he told me to!" as I passed the girls, but they weren't offended at all. I'm just glad Bre and Tara weren't there to hear him yell that!

I passed several more people in the final stretch, and finally felt good enough to enjoy myself. I ran down the victory chute feeling amazing.

Run: 30:01. Painful, but I'm happy with my effort. And I wasn't penalized for forgetting my bib!

Finishing Time: 1:38:17. 

I'll post more thoughts tomorrow, but overall I'm very pleased with myself. I finished 9th out of 38 in the Novice Men group, and 208th out of 314 total men. You can see the full results here.

Tara, Wiley, and Bre, gracious enough to ignore how bad I probably smell.