or “How to make these mistakes you’re supposed to make only once”

I had my very first triathlon on Sunday. I did some exemplary preparation for it by going to the army for four weeks and training once per week max for a full month.

It was a short distance (0.5 km swim, 18.4 km bike, 3.8 km run)*, and my main goal would have been to be able to do front crawl for the swim, but no, I’m not there yet.

The weather was awesome, and contrary to my fears, the outdoor pool was even heated to about 24 °C. I had borrowed a tri suit from a friend, used my road bicycle and normal running shoes. Among my numerous fans (haha) was my dad who took a few pictures, which I used here, thank you!

I set up my transition zone (not much to set up, actually):

and then nervously walked around for one hour, trying to find out where to enter and leave the transition zone. I watched two other waves swim and got ready for my own.

I had to share my lane with four others, and about 30 seconds before starting, they started to ask how fast we were, probably to arrange a certain order to minimise getting kicked in the face. They countdown was suddenly at zero, and unfortunately I couldn’t join the discussion any more as I had some swimming to do (second lane, blueish goggles):

However, two seconds later, they’d already passed me. Not without me kicking somebody in the head during the process (sorry!):

A few laps later (we had to do ten lanes), I felt still okay, but the water around me was a bit more quiet.

Like, much more quiet.

Anyway, I enjoyed my solo “show” and was happy to finish the swim part. I almost didn’t get out of the pool (thank you for not taking pictures) and wobbled to the transition zone.

Transitions weren’t timed separately, but also without T1, my swim was super mega slow. “Faster than only three others” slow, to be precise. But never mind, I put on my cycling shoes (some struggling there!), number, helmet and glasses and left the transition zone. It’s actually a hockey rink, so it was pretty slippery, especially with race bike cleats on!

The cycling course went ever so slightly uphill for the first few minutes so I felt like progressing only slowly, but everybody experienced the same, I guess. We had to do two laps on this course:

Towards the end of the first lap, around point 420, I passed a few others and followed one guy. At the point where we got back to the same course again (and should have turned right to pass by start/finish), he turned left, and the volunteer with his flags was not really looking, so I ended up doing a left turn, too.

When I realised that I was on the second lap without having passed the start, I asked a volunteer if I shouldn’t have passed start by now, and he said yes; the next volunteer I asked what to do, and she didn’t really know. I decided not to turn around, which – in retrospective – was really, really dumb, but in the moment it seemed okay.

Cycling went okay, especially one part towards the end where the paving was really smooth. My dad captured me just before the end of the cycling leg, me already trying the ultra pro “leave the shoes on the bike” technique:

T2 went okay, I’ll definitely invest in elastic laces for next time. Lots of fumbling around without them! The run was really short, here I am after about 100 m:

Something’s wrong with my left wrist! I’ve seen that before…

I didn’t feel super strong, but okay, and it was much shorter than what I usually run, so it was over with quickly. Finishing:

And discussing my little bike stunt with an official:

They were like, “hmmm, what should we do, disqualification wouldn’t be fair, you did finish after all blablabla” but in the end it says DNF in the ranking list for me. Booo.

I thought it was fun and I want to do more triathlons, I’ll get my own tri suit, tri cycling shoes (to do the “shoes already on bike” thing), elastic laces and probably other running shoes, because mine chafe a bit on the toes. And a neoprene suit for open water swims.

And I want to be able to do crawl for more than 100 metres ;)

Next weekend would be another triathlon, but I can’t go, so that was my triathlon season. I plan to do about four more runs this year (one HM, three short ones around 10K) and lots of swimming. Lots.

* The bike leg was actually just 15.1 km, after measuring it with Google Maps.

Update: I’m no more DNF now.