Olympic Distance Triathlon

This weekend I competed in and completed my first Olympic distance triathlon.

What an incredible experience.

The day started at 6am with registration and transition area prep. My swim wave start time was 7:50. There were 3 waves ahead of me. Adaptive athletes, mens sprint and womens sprint. I spent a good 30 minutes warming up to the 16'C water. I really need this as my chest tends to tighten up in cold water. They started us off in a line along the beach, where I stood abreast with 60 other crazies. My plan was to be at either side, but somehow in my distraction I ended up right in the middle. The start was a dash through the sand and a shallow dive....and then just swim like there's no tomorrow. This being my first open water swim in the ocean surrounded by flailing arms......it lent itself to a bit of panic on my part. I spent the first 200m or so gasping for a deep calm breath and just fighting to get a rythm. I took me up to the 500m mark to finally hit some kind of stride and feel reasonably certain I wasn't going to drown. I swam along side one guy just to feel I wasn't totally alone. The dark deep green murky waters below were FREAKING me out too. I must admit it was a "traumatic" experience. The swim took me over 26 minutes, which is shy of the 24 minutes I was aiming for. I blame it on the panic factor, and the fact that I probably swam the longest course, sticking to the outside for the bulk of the swim. I was so happy to put my feet down on the beach at the transition area near Stanely park (2nd beach). It took me a few seconds to find my legs as I tried my hardest to "run" out of the water and get on my bike. I was dizzy and numb from the cold....my feet were blue. eeek.

My transition from swim to bike took 2 minutes including the run from the beach to the bike stands. I diddled around with my wetsuit, and the KY jelly I used to put it on made it difficult to get a good grip in order to take it off.

I must admit it was disturbing to me to realize how excited I was to see my bike and get to ride it. The ride was absolutely great and I peeled of 40km at a split of 37.8km/hr. Not bad considering I was suffering from post traumatic swim disorder. The ride was 4 10km loops through downtown Vancouver. Up and down Beach Ave, Pacific Ave, over the burrard bridge and through a small section of Stanley Park. I lost my water bottle over a speed bump at 7km and locked up and kicked out my back wheel a few times on the wet pavement. SCAREY!

The ride could have been 80km. I was just so happy to be on my bike.

The transition to run was a bit quicker at 1:13. Not too bad considering I even put on socks. I made one novice error: having lost my water bottle on the ride I was thirsty getting into transition to run. So I downed the spare bottle I left in trasition....with a powerjel chaser. This silly little move left me with a wicked stich for the first 3km of the run. I was considering walking it off, but I just bit my lip instead and ran through it.....all be it at a diminished pace. Honestly the first 3km were HELL. My feet were still blue and frozen, it felt like someone had put large pebbles where my toes were supposed to be and my legs just had a mind of their own. Once I got through that part the last 11km were managable (yes you heard correctly, our 10km run was 14.8km). They had us doing 4 loops along the seawall at Stanely Park. So it was a nice flat run, however the turn around point was about 600m further than it was supposed to be, so we ended up running an extra 4.8km.

Good prep for next weekends half ironman in Victoria.

My finishing time was ~2:40, wich is about 20 minutes shy of my goal of 2:20. Given that we ran an extra 5km, I can safely say I managed to finish in the time I was expecting.....and that thanks to a solid ride where I made up time.

I had so much fun doing this race! I can't wait for my next tri.

http://www.triathlonvancouver.com/index.html