First Olympic Triathlon: Post 1

This weekend I completed an Olympic (International) distance triathlon. That is 1.5K (~1 mile) swim, 40K bike (~24 miles) and a 10K (6.2 miles) run. It was pretty rough.

I'm going to do this recap in chunks, I'm not going to do a post for each leg of the race. I think I'll just stop when I think a post has gone long enough.

-- Pre-Race
The race wasn't near our house so we got a motel room for the night before. That actually worked out pretty well. I slept pretty well, so that was a plus.

For breakfast, I had a bagel that Arial had picked up from the Wal-Mart near the motel. We packed up the car and headed out to the race site. On the 25 minute drive, I had another bagel (this one a mini-bagel). It turns out I should have had more.

When we got there, we had to park in a field. The grass was long and wet which made me glad that I wasn't wearing my running shoes. I put my stuff in the transition area, got body marked and then set my stuff up for the race.

I walked down to the beach area and looked at the swim course. The night before we had come down and the swim looked really long. But after letting it sink in over night, it didn't look as bad. The buoys were still a long way out but I didn't feel as much fear looking out.

We found Mrk and Mg, did some other pre-race things (this time, I used the port-a-potty before taking my shoes off).

Wet suits were allowed in this one, so I donned mine, removed my glasses and found Mrk by wandering near his transition spot and shouting his name until he responded.

We went down to the water. I said my goodbyes to Arial and the kids. Walking into the water, I was surprised that it wasn't that cold. I sure it would have been worse without the wet suit but my feet were colder walking on the dewey grass.

They kicked us all off the beach so they could count us and hand out the swim caps. (I had been joking that they hadn't given to us yet because they were late to be delivered but then I heard a volunteer say "The swim caps have arrived"). I said good bye to Arial and the kids again, got my swim cap and went on the beach.

The men started first (with the women starting 5 minutes later). Everyone was wading into the water up to some imaginary line between some boats. I was going to stay behind most everyone in a less dense section in the middle, but Mrk pointed out that because of the curve of the beach, being on the far outside was actually closer to the first buoy.

The announcer said he would give a countdown from ten and say "Go" but then he made some joke about making a buzzing noise instead of "Go". I thought that was lame but I now I don't even remember what he wound up doing. I just no that the 10 second countdown when rather quick and then we were running in the water.

mwz