Baldwin Park Triathlon

The day finally came for triathlon number two. I felt good going into it, except for the run part. I've been running pretty regularly, but not more than 2.5 miles at a time. Since training with Dominick and regular swims at Lucky's Lake, I've felt much more confident about my swimming.

I placed 11th out of 19 competitors in my age group and 86th out of 363 overall. My time was actually 5 minutes less than my first triathlon, yet the swim part was 350 meters longer. I'd say it was a good improvement. :)

The Goods:

• Swim (750 m): 11 minutes 33 seconds
• Transition 1: 2 minutes 21 seconds
• Bike (13.27 miles): 37 minutes 59 seconds (avg 21.83 mph)
• Transition 2: 1 minute 16 seconds
• Run (2.59 miles): 21 minutes 21 seconds (avg 8.14 min/mile)
• Total: 1 hour 14 minutes 31 seconds

The Swim (aka The Weed Garden)

If you've never had to wade through 4 foot tall weeds, you haven't lived! Lake Baldwin has an incredibly dense weed forest reaching from shore to probably 100 feet out. In fact it's probably like that the entire way, but 100 feet is about where I lost sight of it. Every time I pulled some off of me, plenty more came to take its place. Not the most pleasant part of the swim.

The swim itself went great once we got past the bulk of the weeds. It took a little while to get out of the main pack of swimmers to avoid getting kicked. I lost some time just trying to get out of the pack, but I tried to draft people to make the swim a bit easier. It didn't feel like 750 meters, I think because it's split up into 3 pieces and I usually just swim out and back at Lucky's Lake.

The Bike Ride (or "Oh shit, how many laps have I done?")

The bike ride went great. I wore my camel pack so I didn't really have to slow down to drink water. We rode 5 laps around Lake Baldwin and it's surprisingly difficult to count to 5 when you're exerting that much effort. I had the GPS with me so I just watched the mileage on it, but I ended up having to do math in my head to figure out my lap.

Going around in circles like that you get good at staying to the right and passing on the left. I saw one accident that took both racers out and I heard of several others happening. I felt like I was going so fast until some of those guys with their triathlon bikes went flying past me. It gave me something to aspire to. :)

The Run (or "Are my legs still working?")

The run was just sort of run on adrenaline. I haven't been training nearly enough at running as I have with biking and swimming and I really felt it out there. The pace was still pretty good, but I want to start track training and running intervals. I think that will help a lot.

I was having some chest pains during the run so I think I want to go see a doctor and get a physical and a stress test. The last physical I had was several years ago, long before I started getting into shape. I'd like to see the difference.

What's Next?

I have the triathlon bug. To see that your body is capable of this and not dying is pretty encouraging and intense. I want to do an Olympic distance triathlon before the end of the season. I'm going to start doing some more formalized training with the running and the bike. I've been training somewhat formally at the pool, but with the run I just do a lap at UCF twice a week. I do a lot of biking, but no real structured intervals, but I have been working Fartleks into my commute.