Treasure Island Triathlon
The Treasure Island Triathlon or "the course with an endless number of loops" was my forth Triathlon.As with every event I was up super early by 6:30am I was at Treasure Island to pick-up my race packet and get my transition area setup. As I was getting set-up I met a number of friends from Team in Training, Treasure Island is one of the events that the Fall Tri team were training for.
The morning was overcast and the water did not look every inviting, but the swim was still requirement of the Triathlon. I got in the water to warm-up and that very quickly cooled me down :) the water was chhilly 58F. The swim course was two loops while it was only 1.5K it felt like a long swim. It was hard to sight and easy to go off course, I'm sure I got a little extra distance from all the zig-zagging. Soon enough I was out of the water, my feet were number and I was running into the transition area.
Then on to the bike, 6 laps around a very technical course, overall there is a total number of 176 turns! The course is flat accept for a one small hill. My biggest concern was simple, would I lose count of the number of laps? To make sure I didn't keep going around the course indefinitely I kept careful track of my mileage. The turns were sharp and there were a number of pot holes and with a large number of people on a small course I had to keep my wits about me to avoid an accident.
There was some occasional drizzle and some head wind also, no apparent sun light due to efficient use of clouds in the sky.
One advantage of course like this is you always know what to expect next due to the fact it, you've already it done several times, but this does allow you the chance to improve every lap and get a rhythm going.
I generally like a good long bike bike but 40K in circles was quite enough, I was glad to get out on to the run course! The run course was four loops of an out and back course, when I started the run I thought that meant going out and back four times, luckily I confirmed my assumption was wrong on my second out and back before I started off on a unnecessary third and forth run. Please and surprised that the run was over sooner than I expected I sprinted into the finish!
(If you look closely at the pictures below, you'll see the water shooting out of the bottle I was carrying)
Final Finish Time: 2 hours 48 minutes
Course Details (click here to view on Google Earth)
Swim 1.5K:
36 minutes
T1: 3mins 23secs
Cycle 40K:
1hr 17 minutes
19.1 mph Average Speed
T2: 1min 59secs
Run 10K:
49 minutes
7min 57sec per mile
Labels: Triathlon
posted by Nick @ 10:00 PM
Comments: 0
