My First Sprint Triathlon

I finished at precisely 100 minutes -- five minutes more than I had hoped.  Actually at one point I thought I could finish around 85 minutes but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm talking about the 2012 Upper Main Line Y triathlon consisting of a 450 m. swim, 10 mi. bike ride, and 5 km. run.  I had been thinking about doing this for over a year before I convinced myself I could do it.  I trained for four months prior to the event during which I:

1. Spent $400 fixing up my 40 year-old Schwinn LeTour bike that I did not use.
2. Crashed same bike two weeks before the race and escaped with minor scratches.
3. Felt exhausted and cranky at work most of the time.
4. Lost 5 lbs. while eating unconstrained amounts of food.

I started training at the beginning of 2012 by doing gym triathlons - swim indoors, bike on a spinner, and run on the treadmill.  I never did the full distances but felt confidant I could do 12/32/31 minute splits.  With 10 minutes for both transitions I would finish in 85 minutes and win my age group (based on the previous year's results).  Then I started training outdoors and realized that the 50 m. pool, the hills on both the bike and running course, plus the wind added a real difficulty factor to the endeavor.  Fortunately I realized this before the event and decided to relax and enjoy the event.

Here are my splits as per my Ironman watch.

Swim	13:00
Trans #1	5:27
Bike	44:17
Trans #2	2:38
Run	34:38

It was a perfect day -- temperatures in the 50's to 60's, brilliant sunshine, low humidity.  Because the swim event was in the outdoor 50 m. heated pool, the 300+ participants were divided into groups and each group started only after the previous group completed their swim (every athlete wore a timing chip which was tracked by computer).  This resulted in a nice, peaceful competition of athlete vs. self instead of athlete vs. crowd.

The swim was fun, the bike ride was challenging as I had to walk my bike up the two steepest hills.  The run was dreadful.  After finishing the bike ride I did not want to run 5 meters let alone 5 kilometers.  But following the mantra of "put one foot ahead of the other, now REPEAT" I muddled through the run.

Then it was over.  Later in the afternoon I slept exactly as long as I had competed.  Amazing how things balance out.