Tejas Triathlon Report....

Disorganized! Terribly disorganized. That pretty much sums up my tri outing last Sunday. Somehow, I didn't leave for the event early enough. Having left home at 5:30, I drove to Sugarland. En route, I recalled that the race starts at 7am and the 'transition area' closes at 6:45am. So I'm realizing that I'm going to be late and that I'm about to get shut out of the transition area due to my tardiness. I drove pretty fast and luckily didn't get lost or have a run in with the coppers.

I flew into the parking space, whipped the bike out of the trunk, tossed the wheels on (of COURSE the chain was all wadded up around the front sprockets and required my clean hands to intervene...chain is filthy greasy, needing maintenance). You've never seen anyone pump up tires as quickly as I did....NASCAR teams would scramble to hire me!! I crammed as much of my stuff into my little tri bag as I could and draped other items around my neck and HAULED over there (vagabond triathlete!)....into the transition area with 1 minute 'til closing! It was quite the site! Most people have an organized area beneath their bike that has their gear logically spread out, as you can see in the random tri photo that I swiped from the internet. My stuff was just dumped in a big pile in a very crowded transition area. I lacked safety pins to secure my racing number to my shirt. I scored some and the "transition police" would not allow me to re-enter to pin my number to my shirt... (where's my rolling eyes emoticon?).








There were a LOT of people and I was almost anonymous, but did see my friend Katy and her husband. The lake was nice, the venue was nice. My swim didn't quite go as planned. Of course there was no shortage of me kicking people behind me and being kicked by people in front of me. I inhaled a huge chunk of lake water very early in the swim, not good! That kinda set the stage for the rest of the swim. I again found myself breathing to the left every rotation of the arm, 'single-stroking'. I was just kind of 'clawing along' in the lake. After the turn around at the end of the lake, I began to regain composure. The 600 meter swim took me about 12 1/2 minutes...not too bad, not too good.

The first transition (switching from swimming to biking) had me digging thru the big pile of stuff that I had tossed on the ground. Of course I had to pin my number on my shirt and search out one lost sock....very poor transition time, 3 1/2 minutes, most did it in under 2 minutes.

The bike was good, I thundered pretty well, averaging 19.1 mph for the 11 mile course. The run felt pretty good, although really tough, not for the timid! I don't know if the run course was short, or timing is in error, as I don't think I ran as fast as the results indicate. But I'll take it anyway!! (Bowing to the crowds, "thank you, thank you") Run: 22:36 at a 7:32 min/mile pace. Overall finish, 22nd out of 44 in my age group, 1:08:18.

[BEGIN RANT] One quick RANT, while I'm at it. I'm 44, NOT 45! Apparently, USAT (the triathlon sanctioning body) NOW lists your age that you'll be on December 31st of the year! Good grief, don't be giving me an extra year that I haven't yet earned, or deserve!! AND they drew 45 on my arm and back of my leg! THEN they stuck me in the '45 and older' class. I'm only 44!![END RANT]

Great event, great venue! I'll do this one again!