Not a very good report to finally get out after the Mission Bay Sprint Triathlon of October 4th. At the same distance as the Surftown Tri about a month ago, my overall time was about five minutes slower at 1:07:11. As I look over the winning times, they seemed to be about five minutes slower than the previous sprint race at Surftown.

Swim (11:43) – I had intended to get my swim to 10 minutes or under but simply tired out. Later I heard from a couple of folks, including my coach, that they thought the swim course was measured incorrectly, and was actually a little longer than it was supposed to be. No matter, I still have a long ways to go with respect to swimming.

Bike (29:51) – I was probably most disappointed with my bike performance. I had significant difficulty at the start of my bike segment putting on my cleats. I had not practiced putting my cleats on since the last race, and I actually had to stop to the side, remove the cleats from the pedals, and put them on. I probably lost over a minute due to the poor start. The bike course seemed very technical with lots of sharp turns and zig-zags through the Sea World parking lot. The best part of the ride was the one loop around Fiesta Island, which I have done numerous times. When I arrived home to upload my Garmin data, I noticed that the overall bike distance was about 10.2 miles. The race distance was supposed to be 9.3, most likely another mis-measurement of the course.

Run (22:45) – This was the best part of my race. It’s not my fastest 5k time, but it is certainly the fastest 5k time for me AFTER swimming and biking. I’m encouraged by my progress in running, and I hope to break the 20-21 minutes barrier in the next several weeks. On a cool note, I passed three or four people in the “finish chute” area, and actually stepped on the mat at the finish line a split second before someone else.

Sprinting to the finish line

Transitions – I’m fairly pleased with my transition times, T1 = 0:02:16 and T2 = 0:01:06. My T2 was the fourth fastest in my age group. If I had not stopped to take a couple of sips from my drink bottle, I’m betting I would have had either top or number two T2 time in my age group.

This was my fifth and last triathlon of the season. In the off season, I am determined to radically improve my swimming technique, fitness, and endurance. By the next spring, I would like to be able to shave at least three minutes off my swim time at this sprint distance. To that end, I asked a fellow Breakaway athlete to teach me how to do flip turns in the pool. Doing flip turns will force me to hold my breath longer as I push off the wall, and I believe that being able to go farther on less air will improve my fitness in the water. Also, I’ve asked my coach to include more speed/interval training in my weekly pool workouts.

Despite not having broken the one-hour barrier, I think I had a very successful rookie triathlon season.