Race Report - Littlefoot Tri

I just realized that it has been 3 months since my last post, so rather than try to summarize the last 3 months, I'll post some race reports. First up is the Littlefoot Triathlon. This was my first road triathlon of any kind, and my first sprint distance race. The race was in the middle of May. The weather the weekend before the race was snow here in Denver, so needless to say, things were not warm for this race.

The swim: What can you say, the swim was 53 degrees. It was painfully cold. 750 meter swim which is standard for a sprint. I really did not try to push it on the swim, basically because I've never been in water that cold, and wasn't sure how my body would handle it. It was so cold that my face was frozen, so I couldn't really control how my mouth worked for breathing. To avoid drinking half of the lake, I did a lot of sighting stroke which lifts your head out of the water more. Not my best swim, but I got out of the water in 12:28 (1:37/100M). Glad to be done with that.

I had a tough time getting out of the wetsuit due to completely useless blocks for hands, but eventually got out on the bike. Like most races, the bike was my second weakest discipline in this one (on a normal day it would have been the weakest, I just had a really bad swim). That's about all I can say about it, other than it was pretty cold with that air on my already temperature challenged body.

Getting into T2, I just could not find my spot. I picked out a spot that was super easy to find and should have had no problem. Unfortunately the reason I couldn't find my spot was because some noob knocked over an entire bike rack with 4 bikes, and they happened to be laying on my stuff. Eventually I got out of T2 in about the amount of time it would have taken to have a sandwich and beer.



The run was the bright spot of the race, despite the fact that it felt like I was running on blocks becuase my feet were so frozen. I ran 21:08 (6:50/mi.), which I was really happy about.

In all, considering I trained through this race, and wasn't too excited about it due to the conditions, I'll settle for my 51st place overall and 7th in my AG. Total time of 1:14:13. At least I set the bar pretty low to set a PR the next time I decide to race on the road. We'll see if I decide to do that race again next year. I definitely think having a tri bike would help a lot, as you really do feel the drag when you are racing.

Next report; the Bolder Boulder, coming soon.