I finished my first ever triathlon this past weekend and it was a blast! We met at 7am on Friday morning to road trip down to Lake Havasu City, AZ and we made it just in time for the collegiate division pre-race meeting. The atmosphere of the collegiate division was a lot different than the overall competition because during the meeting nobody paid attention to the presentation because everybody was too busy sizing up the competition from the other schools. Our BYU team stood out among all the Arizona and New Mexico schools because they were already completely tanned and we were butt white (didn't help that we had all shaved our legs which made them look even whiter!). We stayed with some families that had offered to put us up for the night and we arrived at the venue at 5:30 in the morning to get our transition areas set up, get body marked, and prepare for the race. The swim start was a wading start where all of the collegiate males (~100 of us) were standing waist deep in the water lined up for the horn. Water temperatures were announced to be around 61 degrees but it wasn't bad at all. The race started and there was some crowding and a little battling for position in the water out to the first buoy turn, but I can't imagine what things will be like in Ironman with more than 20x the number of competitors all starting at the same time. My swim went about as I had expected. I was predicting a time between 28-30 min and was surprised to check my watch coming out of the water and see that I was at 27 min. My transition into the bike went pretty smooth as I was able to get out of my wetsuit pretty quickly, slam a gel, and spray sunscreen on my arms and face before heading out on the bike. Next time I need to make the extra effort to reach around and spray the back of my shoulders cause that was the only spot I got burned, but I got burned pretty good back there.
On the bike I only had my aero bottle filled with gatorade and after doing the first neighborhood sections with some hills, I realized that in the heat I had already polished most of my gatorade and was only 5 miles into my ride. I decided not to drink anymore until the last 5 miles of my ride when I was going to slam my other gel. That was probably a good call as I got a bit of side ache for next little leg of the ride but nothing bad. At the halfway turnaround they were handing out waters so I grabbed and dumped it in the aero drink leaving me with a really watered down gatorade, but in the heat, that's definitely better than nothing. We entered another neighborhood on the way back that had a few pretty steep hills in it. Coming back down out of it I maxed my speed at 46.4 mph to give you an idea of the grades we were riding. After hitting my gel at the 20 mile mark, I started riding pretty hard to try and get back in by my goal time of 1:15 on the bike. At this point in the ride though, the wind had picked up pretty good and so it was tough battling the strong head wind. I was able to pass more riders over the last 5 miles than I had in the previous 5 so that felt encouraging even though my bike time came in around 1:18 which was a few minutes off the pace that I had wanted.
My bike to run transition was really easy as all I had to do was drop off my bike, grab my race belt, and switch into my zoot running shoes. The first stretch of the race is on sand along the water's edge which just saps the energy out of you. After clearing the sand you run up a flight of stairs and across the London Bridge. I could definitely notice the rising temperatures while out on the run and at each aid station I had to grab a gatorade in one hand to drink and a water in the other just to dump on myself and my jersery to help cool me off. Took me almost two miles of running before my legs loosened up and didn't feel like I was going to have shin splints. After that I finally felt that I could hold a solid pace so I was able to ride that for most of the rest of the race until the last 5 mins when I hit the sand again and the way back to the finish. That was by far the toughest stretch of the race so coming around the last corner that put me back onto grass was almost more of a relief than crossing the finish line 100 yards away. My run time finished around 49 min which was a little higher than I had hoped, but I completed the race overall in 2:38:21 which was right in the range of 2:35:00-2:40:00 which I had predicted all week. As a team we finished 3rd overall in the men's collegiate losing only to University of Colorado and University of Arizona. We were pretty happy to be able to come in and place in only our first year as part of the mountian collegiate triathlon conference.
Swim-27 min; Bike-118min; Run-49min; Overall: 2 hours 38 min
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