My first competitive triathlon! Mixed feelings coming out of this one as a couple of things went wrong. As this was my first triathlon I guess this is to be expected, but as I am a perfectionist I am, over course, kicking myself!
First of all, I did two extra lengths in the pool. I was expecting the 'two lengths left' sign to appear and it seems that the marshalls got a little slack with their lap counting. They forgot, so I kept going. The ensuing argument (once I'd done 450m) added about 30secs on to an already slow time. I shrugged it off and headed off to transition 1 with a 6min40 swim time (OUCH).
The bike went pretty smoothly. I made sure I took time at the transition to get everything right, I basically treated it like a practice. Time for 20km - 40mins. I need to some tri bars though, that would have made a huge difference.
More farce on the run. A lack of marshalls on the 5.5km route meant that I took an accidental short cut (no one was ahead of me to follow) and cut off about 0.5km of the run. Made up for the swim muck-up though!!! Came home in 20mins.
Final time: 1:08, 52nd overall (out of 400+), 17th male under 35. I reckon that time could be adjusted to 1:09 with the swim and the run issues.
Overall though I had fun, and I've got some things to work on. Yesterday marked the completion of one of my goals (see my very first post): first triathlon by Spring 2007.
