8th Annual Huntington Sprint Tri / Dua - TriathlonSprint

Swim was much easier than I thought it would be. Felt really fast. Navigation wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Pretty straight forward.

I would be more aggressive next time. Being my first race and first group OWS, I was more concerned about feet/arms/sighting than I really needed to be. I definitely could have gone faster. I was disappointed when I saw my split at first but then I learned that the swim time included the not-so-short run up to the transition area (felt like a good 300-400m of running from the beach and up a hill). So I'm thinking my actual swim time was more like 10 min.

Pretty happy with T1. Easily found my bike, quickly dried my feet and got socks and shoes on. Helmet, sunglasses, and jogged out to mounting area.

Not much. Wasn't really quick on the mount, just don't have that finesse yet.

Felt good most of the ride. Had a little bit of a hard time deciding if my pace was just right, too slow, or too hard at times. Was helpful to have others to pace off of.

One thing I noticed is that the people that passed me NEVER stopped spinning. I would follow them for a few miles and occassionally I would give my legs a few seconds of rest...these folks NEVER stopped spinning. Also think I started in a gear a little too tough. Should have gone a little easier and spun at a higher cadence. I switched to that about half way through and it helped.

I felt like I flew through T2...but I'm guessing on the time because they didn't take a T2 split. They just lumped it into run time. Grrrr. But I would be stunned if I spent more than 1 minute in transition. I biked in my running shoes so there was no need for a shoe change. Just took off my helmet put on my visor and took off.

Take a puff of albuterol. I had some trouble the first mile of the run with my breathing. Nothing really bad but I should have used my inhaler before I started the run.

This was a bit of a struggle and I knew it would be. I forced myself to just set a comfy pace and stick with it. No need to push myself over the edge and be miserable at the finish. My lack of run training really showed here; would love to know how I could have done had I not been training injured for three months.

I didn't realize it until I started the run, but I should have drank more during the bike. It's much easier to stomach fluids on the bike than it is to try to run with it sloshing around in your stomach. I needed more water at the stops than I should have and it made me cramp up a little. Not enough to require stopping, but I will definitely hydrate better on the bike next time.

Drank 2 bottles of water, walked around some. It was HOT.


The shin problem kept me from running the way I would have liked. Overall I think my times aren't reflective of how fast I was capable of going; I was doing more observing and learning and not really pushing myself to perform. I am happy with that approach though because I DID learn a lot and still felt human at the finish line!


I would definitely do this race again because it was a fast, flat course. The folks putting it on did an OK job; nothing really stellar to report but nothing really awful either. Not having a measuring stick of comparison, I would say the event was run fine.