Dilloman Triathlon Report

First off, I learned an important lesson about pre-race nutrition. The Salt Lick is non-optimal. 

But back to the race itself. We got out there with plenty of time, and Carrie and I racked our bikes and got our transition areas set up. It was a small race, only about 170 participants, so it was a very small transition area and one could rack wherever they wanted.

The race started in just two waves. The men went first and then the women about 3 minutes afterwards. My goal on the swim was just to be consistent, not try to go to fast, and keep the breathing under control so that I could freestyle the entire way. Mission accomplished, so that was exciting. I had never actually completed an entire swim in a triathlon without having to breast stroke or back stroke or something. The problem is that I’m just really slow.

But, honestly, I knew that going in.

I got out of the water and saw that most of the other men had made it out. I ran up to T1 (which I’m sure I could have done a little faster, but I have to wear socks, sorry) and jumped on my bike. This is where I knew that I could shine. I started passing people from the very beginning. My legs felt a little dead the first lap, but on the second lap they really started to feel good. Unfortunately, I had a side stitch the entire bike portion. This is where not eating barbecue (or at least taking a very different approach at the salt lick) would have probably come in handy. The sensations in my mid-section were not matching up with the heart rate I was seeing on my computer. 

I was also trying to catch my friend, Dan. I knew he was going to tear up the swim (he is a former competitive swimmer) but I was hoping to catch him on the bike and then basically run a similar time as him. When I finished the second lap and went into T2, I saw his bike, and I knew that I was not going to catch him. He swims really fast.

I caught a lot of people on the bike though, so I was feeling good. I got into my running shoes (I forgot to untie them before the race, whoops!), put my race belt and my visor on, and headed out. I downed a clif shot once I got going and pretty quickly fell into a good groove. Running has never been a strength of mine, but I was feeling pretty good. I kept reeling people in one by one, slowly but surely. It seemed like I was making a good pace as the two rest stops went by. I actually saw Dan ahead in the distance at one point and knew there was no way I could catch him. Oh well, but I kept my pace up. I felt like I was running right below LT, so it felt very sustainable, but I knew that I couldn’t go much faster for very long.

We turned on to the final part and I kicked it up a little to finish things off. It felt good to finish a triathlon so consistently. I’ve never done one before where I felt like I actually did all three things as best as I could. I definitely think I could have squeezed a little more out on the bike with more sane nutrition, but all-in-all I was very happy with my race. 

I was 8/17 in my 30-34 age group and 32/~170 overall. It was a definite PR at 1:23:13 and I it was also my 5k PR at 24:18. All the details can be found on my results page. The annoying thing about those results is they didn’t time the transitions. So I think T1 and T2 got sucked into the bike time. 

Most of all it was fun! (Carrie PR’ed as well, woohoo!)