First Olympic Distance Triathlon

I did my first Olympic distance triathlon on July 17th - The Sunset Challenge in Bridgeton, NJ. After coming out of my first tri, which was a sprint, I thought I needed a longer distance and that the sprint was too short. Well, I didn't come out of the Olympic thinking it was too short! The week of the event, the lake failed water tests, so they had to modify the tri to a run-bike-run, so maybe that had something to do with it (I hope!). I was really hurting at the end and, again, it reminds me how far I have to go in order to do the Half Ironman in October.

I finished the Olympic distance in 2:42:25, which placed me 27th out of 50 running the race. The winner did it in 1:58:38. The bike course had a decent number of hills, etc., which kept my biking pace slower than I wanted/hoped at 18.1 mph. The winner did the bike at an avg of 23.3 mph. The first leg (2.6 mi run) was at a decent split of 20:20 (7:49 min mile), since I was trying to just put together a good pace and not kill it prior to the bike. The bike (25 mi) was done at 1:22:56, missing my goal of a 1:15:00 split. The final run, a 10K (6.2 mi), was incredibly slow relative to what I thought I could and should do. Goal was to keep at an 8 min/mile pace (sub 50 mins), but I was struggling most of the run and finished in a time of 55:45 (8:59 min/mile). Both transitions were decent, each under 2 minutes. Considering the heat (90+ degrees), those transitions were good since I was both hydrating and dumping water on my head during each.

Not quite sure what to make of the Sunset Tri and my performance there. I could probably blame it on the heat and move on, but I have to think that it is actually related to a need to train far more in advance of the Half Iron.