I raced my first Triathlon today! The Peachtree City Triathlon is a sprint tri (0.3 mile swim, 13.3 mile bike, 3.1 mile run) and I came in with a time of 1:23:56. This was about 10 minutes faster than what I thought I’d turn in, so I’m very satisfied.
It was a blast, although the leg I thought I would enjoy the most—the swim—was a chaotic orgy of flying elbows and frog kicks. I got knocked very hard several times, and ended up swimming a zig zag, coming way inside between buoys to avoid other people’s flailing about. The swim sucked.
When you submit your race application for the Tri-PTC, you put down what your think your 100m swim pace is. I had written in 1:45 on the advice of my oldest sister, but I ended up training at approximately 2:00. I had demoted myself a bit in the entry line at the start due to this. I shouldn’t have. I was passing untold crazy people who should have been at least 300 people behind me.* As I said, the swim sucked.
Comparatively, the bike was a breeze. I had expected to be blasted past during this section, and I certainly was by people who were much better cyclists but weaker swimmers, but I was doing most of the overtaking, which surprised me. It also surprised me that I was making up some serious time on my neighboring cyclists during downhill sections, and especially in the tight corners. The majority of the few dozen people I biked around weren’t taking the corners very aggressively. This all surprised me because I figured that most people would spend their training time on the bike and run legs, improving their skills and speed.
Lastly, the run was short. I turned in a 26:37 5k run time, which for me was exceptionally fast. I don’t think the course was marked correctly. But, as long as it’s the same course every year, it doesn’t really matter.
We had fun, and I’m looking forward to the next one of these I’ll do, probably at the same location this coming spring at the Olympic distance (1500m swim, 40k bike, 10k run).
*This race started the swim by twos every two seconds. There was no massive wave start.
In case you’re interested, my splits and ranking for my age group (30-34) were:
Overal Rank – 28
Age – 34
Swim Rank – 7
Swim Time – 10:23
Transition 1 – 2:28
Bike Rank – 35
Bike Time – 42:12
Bike Avg MPH – 18.8
Transition 2 – 1:18
Run Rank – 36
Run Time – 26:37
Run Pace – 8:36 min/mile
Total Time – 1:22:56
Full results Here
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