St. Anthony's Triathlon

Pretty psyched for my third Olympic distance triathlon, Jon and I headed down to Tampa a day before Mike, Greta and Nabeel (thanks to Mike's family for letting us stay in their house).  We hung out Friday night and then went on a kayak excursion during the day on Saturday, then it was an early bedtime for me waiting for my early wake up call.  Unfortunately, that "call" came a little earlier than I had in mind, as Joann, Dan, Ingrid and crew are rolling home from a night out in Old Town.... it took 3 rounds of listening to some awful rendition of Bon Jovi before I got Marc on the phone to explain it wasn't voicemail they were talking to.  Finally back to bed for a few hours sleep.

This was by far the worst swim ever, and I don't mean for lack of training or any other factor on my part.  The local Tampa newspaper ran a story on this swim in the days following the race, with the headline,

"A stiff wind kicked up 4-foot swells Sunday, when more than 50 swimmers had to be plucked from Tampa Bay." -- click on the newspaper logo to read the whole story!

My wave start was 8:35 AM, just a few waves earlier than the team in training group that they mention.  The water was so choppy, there were times that I didn't know if I was going to make it.  The waves and wind made it hard to breath and it honestly felt that no matter how hard I swam, I was making absolutely no progress.  My swim time will show that this was indeed my worst time ever, taking over 15 minutes longer than my normal 1500m swim.  Awful, awful, awful.

Moving on to the bike, the rest of the race was uneventful.  The bike course was relatively flat, though the few minor inclines killed me -- really need to do more bike training -- and partly in the shade which was nice.

The run was hard, for me, because I am not a runner.  I walked most of it, but managed to pick it up and run across the finish line where my friends were waiting for me.  4:10:39 is not my best time, but I was happy to be done!

The reward dinner was at Bernards Steakhouse and it was delicious... though I practically fell asleep during dessert despite my fantastic strawberry shortcake.

Swim	T1	Bike	T2	Run	Finish
0:43:09	0:05:41	1:42:08	0:03:33	1:36:09	4:10:40