fair performance

Well, my 3rd triathlon attempt ended pretty well, with a sprint finish at the end between myself and my neighbor. I let him win, seeing as it was his first finish and all. ;-) Seriously though, I had no idea when we were going to hit the finish line as there was no banner, and you had to make about 2 S turns before you had a 5 yard final straight. Everyone who was there lamented about the lack of a true finish line and how un-spectator friendly it was.

That all being said, it was a decently ran race I guess. The more I think about it, the more I'm kind of down on it though. The turnaround point on the run was a orange cone and a lady sitting in the shade. I had to ask if that was the turnaround point or not, there was no signage. We were told that "we couldn't miss it" as we were getting our final notes before the swim.

Oh well. I swam crappy as usual, biked ok (didn't feel that strong), and ran pretty well. I'll take it. Especially for eating tacos and drinking beers the night before the race. I really didn't want to do this tri, as cross season was so close, but I signed up shortly after the letdown at Shawnee Mission Park. I'm glad I did, but even more glad to start serious bike training and put this multi-discipline stuff on the shelf for a long time.

Results are still out there, somewhere in the ether. Hopefully we'll see them soon.

BIG THANKS to everyone who came out and cheered for me. It was really nice to have a well-sized contingency on hand to cheer us on. At this stage in my athletic life, it's not so much that the cheering makes me dig deep and press harder, but it gives me something to quiet down the "just walk a few steps" voice in my head, and to keep my pace steady. Fast and steady wins the race.

Update: Here is how I did. I'm pretty pleased with the performance, especially when I felt at least 1 mph slower on the bike than I averaged.
My place/Total sprint participants: 204/396
My place/Age group participants: 22/39
Swim time: 16:00 (30/39, I could easily whack 5 minutes off this time with some technique)
T1 time: 3:27 (17/39) Could trim some time here with some tri shoes and learning how to flying mount
Bike time: 40:07 (17/39) 17.6 mph, I could easily buy some speed here with an aero kit, probably about 2-3 minutes easy
T2 time: 1:22 (10/39) Some sockless shoes are in order I think, but an ok transition considering I took a few seconds to finish off my bike bottle
Run: 28:58 (22/39) I did pretty good here. I think my pace was a 9:40 mile, which I'd like to get down eventually. Lots of other areas to improve first.
Overall time was 1:29:52, which my first tri was at 1:53:58. Considering the swim was longer in that one, I was still ~15-16 minutes faster. I'll take it.