UCSD Sprint Triathlon

Competed in my first triathlon of 2011 this past weekend at the UCSD Tritonman Sprint Triathlon. Well, it was supposed to be a tri, but due to the amount of rain that has been hammering So Cal it was deemed unsafe to swim and turned into a duathlon. This ended up being my first ever run.bike.run. and a great way to test my speed against all the young college kids. Here are my splits and some notes on the race.

Run - 2 miles - Time. 12:49 Pace. 6:25 per mile.
Not a bad start but definitely should have pushed this a little harder. The run was mostly flat, a couple of small rollers, but did include some areas of mud which made it a little slow. I tried to hang with the leaders in my wave but there were some guys flying.

T1 - :36 seconds
Simple. Came in and took off my running shoes. Put my helmet on and grabbed my bike. Happy with the ease and speed of this.

Bike - 12.25 miles - Time. 34:04 Speed 21.5 mph
Felt really good on the bike. I was able to stay in the aero the whole time and was comfortable as well. Definitely seeing improvements from all the leg strength training I have been doing. Lot's of work needs to be done though as this is the pace I need to be able to hold over the Ironman distance, which is about 100 more miles!

T2 - :33 seconds
Simple again. Came in. Hopped off the bike and put on my running shoes and was off. Happy here.

Run - 2 miles - Time. 13:49 Pace. 6:54 per mile
This was the one area I felt rough on. Coming off the bike my calfs cramped for the first couple hundred yards of the run. I thought about even walking to stretch it out a bit but fought it off and continued to run. I really would have like to have pushed this section harder but my legs just wouldn't go. Definitely happy that I felt bad and was still able to run this fast, but would have liked to felt good! One good note is that I felt as if I was getting stronger towards the end of the run and never felt like I was going to run out of gas.

Total Time - 1:02:14
Overall Place - 51
Age Group Place - 3

Pretty happy with the effort and the results from this race. Running a sprint distance at a collegiate event I knew going in that I was going to get dusted by quite a few young guys but had hoped to go under 1 hour. If I would have pushed just a tad harder on the run segments I could have done that for sure. All in all it was a good test as to where I am speed wise going into the season and definitely a fun day at the beach!