Dragonfly Triathlon - Triathlon

Well, since my 1st ever Tri was last month and the OWS was AWFUL. I'd gone to this race site last weekend and spent a lot of time getting used to OWS, this proved to be a great move. After my war-up I'd gotten over the shock of the water, and once the swim started I felt good. About 300yrds in I had to revert to head above water front crawl as my breathing was heavy. I thought I would come in somewhere between 20 and 25mins. So I was happy when my wife shouted sub-20 to me as I ran up the beach. This gave me a lot of confidence going into the bike!

More OWS practice, and more swimming in general is required for me to get any faster than this.

Nothing to report, pretty standard. Didn't mess around with socks or wiping sand off my feet, straight into bike shoes, and helmet and shades on and out of T1

I need to learn to get into shoes on the bike.

Wow, I felt good on the bike, when my garmin finally picked up a signal i was stonking along at 22mph and kept this up for half the course, the hills at the turnaround slowed me down, but even with my dismount woes (see below) i averaged 20.58mph. 1st time over 20!! AMAZING. I'm on a road bike with ITU legal aerobars (deda metal blast) which are very short, but very cool. Tried to stay as aero as possible for the whole leg and did a pretty good job. So little wind it made for a great ride. BUT....

DOH... I got a drafting penalty. I wasn't that close, but close enough for the officials to call it, i had moved out to the left for a while, so that I wasn't in her draft but it wasn't enough. You live and learn. I really had no intention of drafting or gaining an advantage.

DOH x2... took my feet out of my shoes and something got snagged, shoes hitting the floor, chain slipping off! Got off, put chain back on chain ring, left calf cramping!! arrrgh. Chain was off at the cassette too. Dropped bike. This fiasco cost me 2 mins, unclipped shoes and jumped on bike for last 0.2 miles. (should have just run.)

Drop back if I'm not going to pass, even if it means I have to back off quite a bit.

Don't mess up getting my feet out of shoes.

Otherwise this was my strongest bike yet. Loved every minute.

See bike section, messed up pretty bad trying to get feet out of shoes. Didn;t fall off but chain dropping cramping nightmare ensued. Cost me 2 mins coming into T2

Not mess up

Run at this event is HARD. An easy flat 1st mile, but then it's 2 miles of trails and man they are hilly. Lots of tree roots, bridges and steep climbs/descents.

You can see my lat times for the trail were pretty bad

7:51
9:10
8:47
7:54

But I picked it up again towards the end.

Practice trail running. More bricks.

Wet towel and mist shower and some walking around.

Ate some food and sat and watched the awards with some colleagues who were competing in the relay.


I would say my OWS still needs work, and my running off the bike.


I 3 goals for this race
1) Come in under 1h50mins
2) swim in under 25mins
3) bike at a 20mph+ average

And I met all of these goals, so am very happy. The penalty and issue coming into T2 cost me probably 5 places in the AG, which would have put me ~6th. But I aren't bitter. I think the penalty was fair.

This was my 2nd tri after Memphis in May last month, which was pretty disastrous after a bad OWS. This was so much better, honestly after the last race I didn't want to do any more tris, but now I am hungry for more!!