A few weeks ago I posted about having some difficulty with my swim training for an upcoming triathlon. Well, I finally was able to overcome it and the swim clicked with me last week. I was able to swim across the lake and back without panicking twice last week. The triathlon was yesterday.
I participated in the Danskin all women sprint triathlon in Seattle. It was a world record breaking event with 5,454 participants and the 100th Danskin triathlon. They started us in 36 waves of 150, each wave 4 minutes apart and grouped according to age. I was in wave 19, started 1 hour 10 minutes after the first group of elite athletes.
The swim was 1/2 mile and I came out of the water and crossed the mat at 17:20.
The bike was 12.4 miles and I crossed the finish mat at 38:20 with an average speed of 19.4 miles. It was a hilly course that took us across the I-90 floating bridge (express lanes) and there was a pretty good headwind on the way back.
The run was 3.1 miles that followed the shoreline of Lake Washington before turning up a steep hill and down to the finish line. I had a wicked side ache that wouldn't let up so my run time was 26:19.
Since the race was so huge, the transition/bike area was enormous and I was stuck in the back corner as far away from the swim finish and bike start as you could get. As a result, my transition times were long because most of the time was spent crossing from one end to the other and then back again.
My total time was 1:30:33 which put me at 406th overall. 90th out of 554 in my age group of 34-39 year olds. Not bad for a newbie.