I made it!

So, I a made it through my first Triathlon! It was a wonderful morning in the Pocono mountains. The best news is that I exceeded my expectations and beat all of my split goals.

• The actual swim was 12:01 minutes v. a goal of 15-20.
• The actual bike was 1:07:52 hours v. a goal of 1:15
• The actual run was 24:18 minutes v. a goal of 30:00
• The actual overall time was 1:49:51 hours v. a goal of roughly 2:15 (with transitions)

(note: in the picture to above you will see that along with my age group, they started the "Clydesdale" class. Sort of like swimming with water buffalo - but, really nice chaps!)

Hmm.... maybe I should set tougher goals...
Anyway, that all resulted in a finish in my age group (50-55) of 11th out of 31 competitors. Overall, I was 151st out of 331. So, in the top "third'ish" in my age group - exceeding my goal of "middle of the pack". With a baseline of wondering if I could even do this 6 months ago, I'm pretty pleased.
I am also happy to report that I see plenty of room for improvement:

• The swim sort of freaked me out since it was my first experience in the "open water". With that said, I came out near the top of my "wave" and was 58th of 337 overall. I know I can improve on that by relaxing and being more prepared for overtaking "slowpokes" from the wave in front.
• My swim to bike transition was really slow because I was pretty winded by the swim, so some room for improvement there - possible 1.5 minutes, easy.
• The bike met my expectations as being my "weakest link". My overall position on the bike portion was 186th overall. Plenty of room to improve on the climbing portions - need to work on my leg strength. I was pretty speedy on the descents - maxing out at around 42 mph at one point - woo hoo!
• The run was fairly wobbly at first - I blame that on never having put all three of these sports together (should have done some "brick" workouts in my training!). I finished 142 overall in the run - slightly better than my overall for the whole shooting match.

This was a great experience and I really enjoyed having Brad II there to cheer me on - and to snap a few pictures for this blog.

Looking forward to the next event in Philly: June 27
I know what to work on! And - I now know it is possible.

p.s. if you "mouse click" on the pictures they will "blow up" in your browser with pretty nice resolution - so, be careful!