Second triathlon scratched off the list!
Whew it’s over! I made it through my second triathlon. As I wrote in this post I decided to do the sprint since I didn’t have enough time to properly train for the olympic distance. I’m so glad I made that decision because once I started my training program after the bodybuilding show I realized that A. I’m not a fan of endurance training and B. I didn’t train enough period. The training plan you see in that post was not followed! I started out strong but then slowly started to lose interest in training. But even without training really hard I managed to pull off 3rd in my age group. I was shocked when I received the news!
Let’s take a look at my times from the same race in 2011. I trained even less for that race!
swim 20:35
bike 48:51
run 40:04
Times for this race:
swim 18:43
bike 42:06
run 32:02
Not too shabby! Since I’m new to the whole triathlete world and this is only my second one I’m not sure if this is a really good improvement or what. But it seems to be pretty awesome!
The swim is typically the hardest thing for everyone unless you were on the swim team and trained really hard. I did about seven open water swims before the race (anywhere from 200-500 meters) so I felt pretty confident I could make it through the 750 meter swim. It’s still scary as hell looking out over the man-made pond. This year the water was much calmer than the race I did 2 years before. If you ever do an open water swim please train in open water, not just a pool! It’s a totally different ball game when it’s deep, choppy, black and you can’t see the bottom or just stand up if you need a break.
The bike was pretty easy except the wind was crazy strong. I probably would have had a better time if it wasn’t for the wind. The run is my least favorite part of the race and where I really slacked in my training. I found a woman that was about my pace and followed behind her. I was wearing a cap and all I can see was her feet in front of me. I just kept plugging along following her feet. We chatted a little bit and she didn’t mind I was pacing behind her. On the last mile I took a few swigs of Gatorade and picked up the pace. I was running for my life! Then I was passed up by a little 52 year old woman and that motivated me even more to speed it up. I even passed a few people myself.
It felt so good crossing the finish line! I wish I had friends there to cheer me on during the race but had so much support from everyone online. Thanks to everyone that sent well wishes and good vibes that day! And thank you to Joshua and Zak who celebrated with me at Spiral Diner after my race. I ate all the food all day!
Now the bulking process begins. I’ve set up a 5 day split for myself which I will share in another post.
