General Jackassery

I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but I’ve never done a triathlon. Yesterday, I competed in my first ever mini-triathlon. The Rocketman Triathlon at Redstone Arsenal. I decided that I would do it less than a month ago. It was one of this, “just do it!” kind of things and I figured that I would never do one if I didn’t sign up for one now.

I really had fun, despite the pain! I had very low expectations for what I would do. My only two goals were 1) Finish and 2) not be dead last. My third goal was to finish in less than two hours. Now for anyone who is an athlete, taking two hours to swin a half a mile, bike 13 miles and run 3.2 miles doesn’t sound like that difficult a feat. Put all of those together back to back and add 85+ heat and very little shade on the course and you have a tough little race. Even more so if you’ve never done one of these and barely trained for this one.

So, I’m happy to say that I more than accomplished both goals and I’ll be doing another one of these as soon as I get the opportunity. What was my time?

0.5 Mile Swim: 20:05 Swim Rank 14/17
13 Mile Bike: 43:35 Bike Rank 10/17
3.2 Mile Run: 37:37 Run Rank 13/17 (The run really killed me.)

Total time elapsed 1:41:17

Overall I was ranked 203 out of about 241 competitors.

The bike time included the transition area times to change from swim attire to cycling, and cycling to running. I think I could have easily cut 2 to 3 minutes off of that time. I think with some training I can cut up to five minutes off of my swim time. And I think with training I could cut atleast 5 minutes off the run. So, if I was able to cut a total of 13 minutes off of my time I would have ranked5th of 17 overall instead of 13th of 17 in my Clydesdale division. Overall that would have moved me up into the 150’s probably. My goal next year is to finish in under 1:20:00 total time. So the goals will be 15:00 Swim, 38:00 Bike, 27:00 Run. I’ll let you know what happens this time next year!