I did a sprint tri last Sunday, the Madeira Beach Tri (.5 mi swim, 10 mi bike, 5k). I'm a little disappointed with my results, I had hoped to improve my time from the last one in May, but my run was tragic. I try to tell myself that I am just starting out, but maybe I am just destined to be middle (or bottom) of the pack....
The alarm went off at 4:30 (way too early for me, I am NOT a morning person). Mr. FSU and I got dressed, packed the car and hit the road. Transition opened at 5:15 and we got there about 5:30. The race was small, only about 600 people. We got marked and then set up our gear in transition. Then we made our way towards the swim start and got in the ocean to warm up. I swam for a little bit, but didn't want to get too tired. There were only 6 waves and I was in the 5th wave.
I lined up with my age group and the horn went off. I have previously kept to the outside back to avoid getting caught up with everyone else, but this time I stayed to the inside so as not to swim more distance than I had to. It was definitely more crowded, but so much easier in the long run. As always while swimming I asked myself "why am I doing this again?" I got into a semi-rhythm and felt good, I could see a lot of pink caps behind me, so that was a good sign.
I took way tooo long during transition, but then hopped on the bike and took off. Part of the race had us going over 2 bridges with grates like these....
Scary, especially when prior to the race they made an announcement that everyone needed to slow down over the grates as it had rained the night before and they were slick. I was freaking out. I made it over the first grate fine. Continued the ride and close to the 2nd bridge, I heard sirens and saw a police car speeding towards the bridge. When I got close, people were telling us to slow down as there had been a wreck. As I got to the top I saw people on the side of the bridge covered in blood. We all slowed way down-which made it take even longer to get over the grate-the whole time I was thinking please let me make it over this thing. We found out later one person was airlifted to the hospital but everyone was fine. After coming off the bridge the rest of the ride was into the wind, so that was tough. As I came up to the dismount line, there was a guy in front of me dismounting his bike and the race officials were telling him to get off the course, turns out he was just some guy out for a morning ride and decided to head into transition!
I took entirely too much time in the 2nd transition and then headed out for the run.....which was entirely on the beach! I knew that running on the beach would be tough, but it really sucked. It was getting hot and I took advantage of the water station at every mile. Mr. FSU came and ran with me for a little bit for the last mile cheering me to the finish. The last .1 to the finish was in soft sand, and it felt like quick sand. Clock time was 1:41, so I figured my time was somewhere around 1:30. I was so exhausted.
Official Time: 1:29:28 347/600ish Swim: 15:56 (compared to 19:10 at prior race) Bike: 34:15 (34:23 prior) Run: 35:00 (11:17 pace , last race was 4 mi at 9:08 pace)
Time to start thinking about my next race in July....it's the same one as my very first tri last year, so hopefully I can do better.
Attachment Deleted This looks almost identical to our pic from the last race, I guess we should change up our pose!
Glad you didn't get hurt in the crash. FYI ... triathletes are notorious for having terrible bike handling skills, so they don't often take those warnings seriously, which is super annoying as someone who does!
That's a great run time for being in the sand! I would hate racing in the sand (so would my IT band).