Sandringham 'Fun' Triathlon - race report
* Website
* Some pictures by me (mostly the day before)
PRE-RACE
I have been doing a six week "try a tri" course with Tri-Alliance. It's been really good...the coaches and other athletes are quite friendly, and we do a LOT of very race-like practice. I think this helped stopped me being nervous. I felt quite confident that I would be able to finish and be well prepared and generally know what was going on.
I don't have a car. Turns out it's kind of annoying to do triathlon if you don't have a car, or don't compete near where you live. :( I had to leave my bike near the venue overnight and get a lift with one of the try-a-tri-ers. I chained it to the back of cage of firewood at a servo near the venue (Sandringham Football Oval). I was somewhat worried I would come back and find it stripped and be unable to race, but luckily that was not the case. It cost like $800 (small bikkies compared to road bikes) and I've had it for a few years so it's not super shiny, but it still looks pretty good in my book. :)
So Kirsty came and picked me up at 5am. Our race started at 6.45am. My alarms didn't really work out for me; I lay in bed thinking hazily, "I should turn off that horn noise so I can hear my alarm when it goes off..." er, yeah, that was my alarm, and it was 4.55! I had all my stuff laid out so I just grabbed it and a glass of juice and ran out to find Kirsty waiting for me.
We got there and I picked up my bike and went in to set up my transition area:
I had a great position - first bike on the 2nd last rack. Very easy to remember and find!
While I was setting up, a guy and a girl wandered past, the girl lamenting, "I'm going to be the only one on a mountain bike!" I told her, "No you won't!" She looked at my bike and started laughing, "You have a rack!" Pff. Racks are awesome in every situation except racing, which so far constitutes over 99% of my cycling experiences. :P
Although I must say being around triathletes it doesn't take long to get bike envy. I'm telling myself I need to complete a few more races before I can justify buying a road bike...
Then I got changed and headed down to the beach.
Map of full course:
Close map of swim and transition area:
Aqua=swim, yellow=ride, pink=run.
SWIM - 250 m 0:09:21
* 249th overall
* 47th in category
The air was about 19deg, and so was the water. The water quality was poor (murky as all get-out) but the swell was not very high and there was no breaking waves. The design of the swim meant we were swimming with the current, so the water itself was not really a problem. My category/wave (Females 18-29) was the last one - +00:14 - so we started at 6.59am. Apparently there were 74 finishers in that category, although it certainly didn't seem like there were 74 of us on the beach.
Anyway I started in the middle of the pack, which is pretty much exactly the worse place to start. There was a decent amount of limb flailing, and I encountered a few breast-strokers, but no one swam over me at least. I also didn't do a super great job at sighting - a couple of times I had to correct a little bit, which means I didn't look up enough. When I got out of the water I judged I was at (the back of) the middle of the pack, which seems borne out by my swim time. Especially when you consider that the swim time includes the 1km run up the hill to the oval where transition was!!!
Did I mention I suck at running?
So the swim was OK, although the distance is so short it was nearly over before you got your face wet.
T1 0:02:01
* 68th overall
* 6th in category :)
OK they don't actually calculate ranks for transition times, but I was curious. :) Pretty much the first thing Tri-Alliance teaches is that you should wear in the water what you're going to wear for the whole race, and minimise all time in transition. T1 = picking up your bike for the ride. Not wearing a wettie, not needing to get changed, having shoes with elastic laces and not having fancy bike shoes = pretty damn fast transition. 2 mins pretty much reveals how slowly I run.
BIKE - 8 km 0:17:52
* 191th overall
* 20th in category
Bike! I didn't have a good sense before the race about if I was any good on the bike or not, because in the try-a-tri we only rode a few times. But during the six weeks I was riding from the city to Elwood (~10km), and sometimes home, or other various rides about 5-10k. In cycling terms that's barely going around the block. But 8k is over pretty quick - you don't need to know about pacing yourself. That was my theory, anyway - I just went all out. My run is so crap that I figured the bike was the last chance I had to improve my position. And I overtook lots of people! It was really fun, especially doing so on a non-road bike with a rack! :) Hehe. Seems like a lot of people don't know that easier gears with higher RPMs = faster than the type of cycling that feels like it's actually using your muscles. I have had that in my head for ages and generally keep it in mind when cycling, but I've never really cycled with anyone else to know if I'm doing it right or what.
It was also fun cycling on two lanes of a road with the traffic blocked off. I later overheard a couple of women talking about the cycle and one of them was like "I just feel nervous about going that fast". I guess I have a little bit of road riding experience, although I generally ride to conditions, but if there are no cars when conditions are all systems go!
I came a cropper on the dismount -- literally. Tri-Alliance teach mounting and dismounting while still riding. I never did get the hang of the mounting, but the dismounting (in sneakers anyway) is a piece of cake -- as long as you're going slow enough. A few weeks ago in training I didn't slow down enough in dismounting and hit the ground:
I thought I'd learned my lesson but... apparently not!
I was looking for the dismount line, still riding quite fast. It came up very quickly (a very "short" 100m warning) and... it's so tempting to keep speeding along! It's so hard to slow down! So again I had a fairly spectacular dismount... onto my arse. This time I swung my leg over, realised I was going too fast and panic-braked, hey presto - meet the road. There was a bit of gasping and an official ran over to help me up. Luckily there was no one behind me -- now that could have been seriously nasty. Also luckily, it was a pretty clean fall and I didn't twist an ankle or hit my head or anything nasty. I just grabbed my bike and ran in for T2.
T2 0:01:02
Because I cycled in sneakers literally all I had to do was drop my bike off. Didn't even bother grabbing my cap as it was quite cloudy.
Some guy cheered for me twice as I ran in and out of transition. Thank you so much, random guy! (Well not so random since he knew my name, I guess it was someone from Tri-Alliance.) It made my day.
RUN - 2.5 km 0:17:33
* 362nd overall
* 65th in category
Running is hard. 65th = bottom 10. But I ran the whole thing... including up a hill on the way back. I didn't have enough in me to do any extra "efforts". It didn't seem like THAT many people overtook me, though.
OVERALL 0:47:48.43
* 273 of 393 finishers
* 46 of 74 category finishers (Female 18-29)
* 92 of 176 female finishers
My run was only 19 seconds shorter than my ride. That's unusual - only 8 athletes had shorter rides than runs, and only another 10 had a difference of less than 1:00.
So ultimately it was more or less as I expected - swim was middle third of the field, bike was top third, run was bottom third. (Actually the bike result is a nice surprise.)
Should be easy to beat, too... just do ANY race which doesn't have a hill from the beach to transition!
Finishing was actually a little anti-climactic, as there was not really anyone around watching or cheering. I guess most people had gone to get ready for their own race. After I finished I wandering around inhaling some food before picking my bike up from transition and getting changed. I spent a bit of time watching the other competitors (there were also Sprint and Olympic distance events) - at T2, and then at the dismount line. Thought I should check out how the "pros" do it!
Actually a lot of dismounting was really ordinary. Lots of people with bike shoes basically rode to the dismount line (some sped to it), stopped, and awkwardly unclipped their shoes. Very frustrating for people who have learned to do a moving dismount and then usually have to run into people who are just stopped. I mean not as if it wasn't predictable but still, it was interesting to watch.
The race organisation was very good. Yesterday I thought it was going to be confusing, but being in the first race helps, as did the signage and officials. And they were quite friendly, cheering us on, especially in the run when I was huffing and puffing like a train on fire. Or something. :)
Could I have completed it without doing the "try a tri"? I would say... maybe, but probably with some walking, and definitely not in that time. I'm not super great at being motivated to run. And feeling confident about the transitions made it easy to concentrate on the 3 sports and not worry that I'd forgotten something or got something wrong (like getting changed!).
There's 3 more races in this series - Portarlington, then Elwood and St Kilda, both in March. I'm quite tempted to try and give them a go. Tri-Alliance have a "social" membership where you can go to 3 sessions a week, which is pretty much enough for me. Although the rest of January is already busy for me, what with moving house and visiting my parents/attending LCA. There's also an XOSize series which has another Sandringham race in late Feb, and Brighton in late March. Those have slightly longer rides (10k) and shorter runs (2k).
I would like to work up to a Sprint distance at some point (750m/20k/5k); maybe some point next year. It is more of a "real" tri. Preparing for some 5K runs would be a good place to start. There are also a couple of ocean swims (~1.2k) that I am interested in doing.
So I have quite a few options...just have to remember to get back in the swing of things after LCA.
Thus ends my first triathlon. :)
* Some pictures by me (mostly the day before)
PRE-RACE
I have been doing a six week "try a tri" course with Tri-Alliance. It's been really good...the coaches and other athletes are quite friendly, and we do a LOT of very race-like practice. I think this helped stopped me being nervous. I felt quite confident that I would be able to finish and be well prepared and generally know what was going on.
I don't have a car. Turns out it's kind of annoying to do triathlon if you don't have a car, or don't compete near where you live. :( I had to leave my bike near the venue overnight and get a lift with one of the try-a-tri-ers. I chained it to the back of cage of firewood at a servo near the venue (Sandringham Football Oval). I was somewhat worried I would come back and find it stripped and be unable to race, but luckily that was not the case. It cost like $800 (small bikkies compared to road bikes) and I've had it for a few years so it's not super shiny, but it still looks pretty good in my book. :)
So Kirsty came and picked me up at 5am. Our race started at 6.45am. My alarms didn't really work out for me; I lay in bed thinking hazily, "I should turn off that horn noise so I can hear my alarm when it goes off..." er, yeah, that was my alarm, and it was 4.55! I had all my stuff laid out so I just grabbed it and a glass of juice and ran out to find Kirsty waiting for me.
We got there and I picked up my bike and went in to set up my transition area:
I had a great position - first bike on the 2nd last rack. Very easy to remember and find!
While I was setting up, a guy and a girl wandered past, the girl lamenting, "I'm going to be the only one on a mountain bike!" I told her, "No you won't!" She looked at my bike and started laughing, "You have a rack!" Pff. Racks are awesome in every situation except racing, which so far constitutes over 99% of my cycling experiences. :P
Although I must say being around triathletes it doesn't take long to get bike envy. I'm telling myself I need to complete a few more races before I can justify buying a road bike...
Then I got changed and headed down to the beach.
Map of full course:
Close map of swim and transition area:
Aqua=swim, yellow=ride, pink=run.
SWIM - 250 m 0:09:21
* 249th overall
* 47th in category
The air was about 19deg, and so was the water. The water quality was poor (murky as all get-out) but the swell was not very high and there was no breaking waves. The design of the swim meant we were swimming with the current, so the water itself was not really a problem. My category/wave (Females 18-29) was the last one - +00:14 - so we started at 6.59am. Apparently there were 74 finishers in that category, although it certainly didn't seem like there were 74 of us on the beach.
Anyway I started in the middle of the pack, which is pretty much exactly the worse place to start. There was a decent amount of limb flailing, and I encountered a few breast-strokers, but no one swam over me at least. I also didn't do a super great job at sighting - a couple of times I had to correct a little bit, which means I didn't look up enough. When I got out of the water I judged I was at (the back of) the middle of the pack, which seems borne out by my swim time. Especially when you consider that the swim time includes the 1km run up the hill to the oval where transition was!!!
Did I mention I suck at running?
So the swim was OK, although the distance is so short it was nearly over before you got your face wet.
T1 0:02:01
* 68th overall
* 6th in category :)
OK they don't actually calculate ranks for transition times, but I was curious. :) Pretty much the first thing Tri-Alliance teaches is that you should wear in the water what you're going to wear for the whole race, and minimise all time in transition. T1 = picking up your bike for the ride. Not wearing a wettie, not needing to get changed, having shoes with elastic laces and not having fancy bike shoes = pretty damn fast transition. 2 mins pretty much reveals how slowly I run.
BIKE - 8 km 0:17:52
* 191th overall
* 20th in category
Bike! I didn't have a good sense before the race about if I was any good on the bike or not, because in the try-a-tri we only rode a few times. But during the six weeks I was riding from the city to Elwood (~10km), and sometimes home, or other various rides about 5-10k. In cycling terms that's barely going around the block. But 8k is over pretty quick - you don't need to know about pacing yourself. That was my theory, anyway - I just went all out. My run is so crap that I figured the bike was the last chance I had to improve my position. And I overtook lots of people! It was really fun, especially doing so on a non-road bike with a rack! :) Hehe. Seems like a lot of people don't know that easier gears with higher RPMs = faster than the type of cycling that feels like it's actually using your muscles. I have had that in my head for ages and generally keep it in mind when cycling, but I've never really cycled with anyone else to know if I'm doing it right or what.
It was also fun cycling on two lanes of a road with the traffic blocked off. I later overheard a couple of women talking about the cycle and one of them was like "I just feel nervous about going that fast". I guess I have a little bit of road riding experience, although I generally ride to conditions, but if there are no cars when conditions are all systems go!
I came a cropper on the dismount -- literally. Tri-Alliance teach mounting and dismounting while still riding. I never did get the hang of the mounting, but the dismounting (in sneakers anyway) is a piece of cake -- as long as you're going slow enough. A few weeks ago in training I didn't slow down enough in dismounting and hit the ground:
I thought I'd learned my lesson but... apparently not!
I was looking for the dismount line, still riding quite fast. It came up very quickly (a very "short" 100m warning) and... it's so tempting to keep speeding along! It's so hard to slow down! So again I had a fairly spectacular dismount... onto my arse. This time I swung my leg over, realised I was going too fast and panic-braked, hey presto - meet the road. There was a bit of gasping and an official ran over to help me up. Luckily there was no one behind me -- now that could have been seriously nasty. Also luckily, it was a pretty clean fall and I didn't twist an ankle or hit my head or anything nasty. I just grabbed my bike and ran in for T2.
T2 0:01:02
Because I cycled in sneakers literally all I had to do was drop my bike off. Didn't even bother grabbing my cap as it was quite cloudy.
Some guy cheered for me twice as I ran in and out of transition. Thank you so much, random guy! (Well not so random since he knew my name, I guess it was someone from Tri-Alliance.) It made my day.
RUN - 2.5 km 0:17:33
* 362nd overall
* 65th in category
Running is hard. 65th = bottom 10. But I ran the whole thing... including up a hill on the way back. I didn't have enough in me to do any extra "efforts". It didn't seem like THAT many people overtook me, though.
OVERALL 0:47:48.43
* 273 of 393 finishers
* 46 of 74 category finishers (Female 18-29)
* 92 of 176 female finishers
My run was only 19 seconds shorter than my ride. That's unusual - only 8 athletes had shorter rides than runs, and only another 10 had a difference of less than 1:00.
So ultimately it was more or less as I expected - swim was middle third of the field, bike was top third, run was bottom third. (Actually the bike result is a nice surprise.)
Should be easy to beat, too... just do ANY race which doesn't have a hill from the beach to transition!
Finishing was actually a little anti-climactic, as there was not really anyone around watching or cheering. I guess most people had gone to get ready for their own race. After I finished I wandering around inhaling some food before picking my bike up from transition and getting changed. I spent a bit of time watching the other competitors (there were also Sprint and Olympic distance events) - at T2, and then at the dismount line. Thought I should check out how the "pros" do it!
Actually a lot of dismounting was really ordinary. Lots of people with bike shoes basically rode to the dismount line (some sped to it), stopped, and awkwardly unclipped their shoes. Very frustrating for people who have learned to do a moving dismount and then usually have to run into people who are just stopped. I mean not as if it wasn't predictable but still, it was interesting to watch.
The race organisation was very good. Yesterday I thought it was going to be confusing, but being in the first race helps, as did the signage and officials. And they were quite friendly, cheering us on, especially in the run when I was huffing and puffing like a train on fire. Or something. :)
Could I have completed it without doing the "try a tri"? I would say... maybe, but probably with some walking, and definitely not in that time. I'm not super great at being motivated to run. And feeling confident about the transitions made it easy to concentrate on the 3 sports and not worry that I'd forgotten something or got something wrong (like getting changed!).
There's 3 more races in this series - Portarlington, then Elwood and St Kilda, both in March. I'm quite tempted to try and give them a go. Tri-Alliance have a "social" membership where you can go to 3 sessions a week, which is pretty much enough for me. Although the rest of January is already busy for me, what with moving house and visiting my parents/attending LCA. There's also an XOSize series which has another Sandringham race in late Feb, and Brighton in late March. Those have slightly longer rides (10k) and shorter runs (2k).
I would like to work up to a Sprint distance at some point (750m/20k/5k); maybe some point next year. It is more of a "real" tri. Preparing for some 5K runs would be a good place to start. There are also a couple of ocean swims (~1.2k) that I am interested in doing.
So I have quite a few options...just have to remember to get back in the swing of things after LCA.
Thus ends my first triathlon. :)