Reeds Lake Triathlon 2012

Reeds Lake Triathlon 2012

The sun was just coming up over the horizon when my group started. The rain had just stopped, so there was a beautiful, brilliant rainbow. I breathe to the right, so I was looking at it every stroke on the way out. I got off course a few times on the swim (it's hard to see when you're swimming right into the rising sun!) Definitely not my best effort in the water, and I think did much better on the swim at Bostwick.

I got back to the transition area and found that it's really hard to put on a long sleeve jersey when you're wet (and at 55F, I wasn't about to go out and bike sleeveless!) I think I'm going to practice jumping out of the shower and putting on either the long sleeve RW jersey or the RW windbreaker while I'm wet before next year. I passed way more people on the bike than passed me, and half of the people that passed me I passed again a few minutes later. About 3/4 of the way through, I started getting bad cramps in my left calf (probably because I was trying to favor my left ankle.) About 2.5 miles from the end, my seat came loose (I apparently didn't tighten it enough when I took the Books saddle off and put the Specialized saddle on last night!) Last night I also put the SPD pedals on the bike, and I used my SPD sandals without socks for the ride. That worked out well, and I think I'll do that again next year.

Getting back to the transition area again, I found that when I pinned the number to the T-Shirt, I pinned it through both layers (making the shirt a bit hard to put on!) Tanja was right there, so she fixed that for me while I put on my shoes. After I got the shoes on and put on the T-Shirt, I ran out through the exit of the transition area and then immediately hit the sidewalk and DNF'd the run. Early this morning I had thought about seeing if I could get at least part way through the run, but when I came out of the swim and attempted to run to my bike it was pretty apparent that my achilles wasn't going to be up to the task, and I didn't want to damage it worse than it already is.

It was still a fun time, and I think that next year will be even better when my achilles is healed and I can do the run!

Unfortunately, I found out later that because I DNF'd the run, they didn't include me in the results at all, so I don't know how well I did in the swim, the bike ride, or the transitions. (Well, that's not exactly true... I know that my transitions were awful!)

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