Echo Triathlon Results

I am still alive!  I did not die from lack of oxygen. But I can tell you that I still don't think Utah has much oxygen for us sea level dwellers.  

The swim was, again, tough!  My time in the water was far too long, 20:41.  That's a full 3:17 longer than my first race.  I was sucking air big time.  Could only do about 20 strokes before needing to take an oxygen break.  I made it to the first buoy in about 6 minutes and knew I was going to have to really pick it up if I was going to match my first race.  About halfway through, I just focused on getting to the end and not worrying about the time.  It seems a lot of people struggled with the swim as the top times weren't where I thought they would be.

Transition this race was slower as well - 4:22 today compared to 3:12 in May. I think it was because I couldn't get my left leg out of the wetsuit!  There was also time spent getting into sandals because it was a long, rocky run to the transition area.

The bike was fun but hard.  Culprit: Oxygen! However, I did a bit better than my first race.  Today I made it in 38:28 and last time it was 39:34 so a whole minute faster.  Felt really good about the bike but was hoping to be closer to 35:00.

T2 was really about the same, 1:37 as compared to 1:35.  So that's good.

The run was just a bit faster this time as well: 24:40 today and 25:24 first race.  I, again, had to stop and stretch my calves after about 200 yards.  Not sure if that is something I will always have to do or not but I will just file it away.  I should probably count on stretching at the bike rack, in transition.  Might be faster there.  The run was good, I didn't walk at all this time and was able to pass some people so that felt good.  

Overall time was 1:29:49.  That's slower than my first race of 1:27:07 but still under the 90 minutes I never want to go over.  I ended up 68th out of the field of 357 who did the sprint distance.  That's in the top 25% of all the racers.  I feel pretty good about that.  In my age group I placed 10th out of 22 so top 50% there.

So, race day has come and gone and I am still alive.  I didn't die from oxygen deprivation, although it was nip and tuck there for a while in the water, grin.

I appreciate so much the support I got today.  Heather and Xander came to cheer me on and that is huge motivation for me.  Also my sister Theresa was there to cheer Blaine (her husband) and I along.  Blaine did great for his first sprint distance tri.  And my sister Karen came as well.  It makes such a huge difference to have people there cheering me on.

So, another race done and now I have to decide where and when the next one will be. 

Stay tuned.