Taking Notes

Today I got up early and road about 9 miles to a local state park to watch the Pine Barrens Triathlon. I debated participating in this race for the past few months but decided I wanted to complete my 9 week race training schedule. Plus this race was a long for a "sprint triathlon"...1/2 mile swim, 24 mile bike and 4 mile run...usually the bikes are more around 18 miles at a Sprint level and the runs are usually a 5K. I think I could have done it and finished today, but I guess I just want to know that I stuck to my training regiment and feel like I've accomplished something on race day just in my training alone.

I'm glad I went to watch. Although I was a little intimidated, I also got excited about my upcoming races. At a small race like this I expected to see more "beginner" level people...but there were some fast people there with expensive equipment! I got there early to watch everyone warm up and prepare their transition areas. A few good notes I took...one guy put Ziploc bags over his feet, then slid them into his wetsuit with no problem. Popped the bags off so he had bare feet again and he was good to go. This took about 10 seconds instead of the 2 or 3 minutes it took some people to struggle to put their feet into their wetsuits. Another tip is to sit down when you're pulling off your wet wetsuit. I saw two people fall over as they hopped around with their wetsuit stuck around their ankles. The smart people had a big beach towel in their transition area and sat on the edge of it, one guy even had a small plastic stool...not a bad idea. The triathlon wet suits are pretty delicate and I heard one guy cuss as he realized he had put a tear in his suit as he was violently trying to shake it off his wet body.

The weather today is about 20 degrees cooler then it was a few days ago, but it wasn't raining which was also in the forecast. The cold morning made me glad I didn't sign up!

There were 3 waves each consisting of around 30 racers.
Today I wanted to be 35 for the first time...that was the age cut off, 35 and under and 35 and over...at least I can look forward to there being benefits to 35 in terms of triathlon racing!
This was a mother and son team! Very fun to watch and made me think of how fun it would be to do something like this with one of the girls someday. He was 14 which was the minimum age requirement.

I had read to rack your bike forward facing for a faster transition so I was making a mental note of how exactly this was done so I look like I have a clue at my first race.

I biked home another route that was around 8 miles. I'm really starting to enjoy the biking. The area where we live is great for biking. Long straight roads with paved shoulders and few lights, traffic, or stop signs. I'm finishing up week 8 of my training. There are basically 4 different triathlon levels...Sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman and Ironman. Sprints are the shortest as I mentioned earlier. I decided to train for the Olympic distances to try to get in better shape. The training book I'm following also has two plans for each level, a "finish" plan or a "competitive" plan. I decided to do the competitive plan at the Olympic level. There have been days I have regretted this idea. But I figure it can only help...and if I'm out running 45 minutes what is another 15 at that point!

I'll quit rambling about the triathlons. I just haven't had much of a chance to blog about it in awhile. So with less then 90 minutes until my house is full of a bunch of strangers I thought I would escape to the computer and ignore my "To Do" list. Therefore... the results are a post containing a bunch of run on sentences and random thoughts that I have about triathlons.