2014 Title 9 Women Only Sprint Triathlon, Hopkington MA

This past Sunday, I participated in the Title 9 Women Only Sprint Triathlon in Hopkington, MA.  It's a .25 mile swim, 10 mile bike and 3.1 mile run.  I trained by doing each activity individually but only twice did I do some running after biking.  And never once did I practice swimming in open water.  I trained only in the pool.  The course was MUCH more challenging than I expected.  For some reason, because it was a women-only event and there were going to be a lot of "newbies," I had assumed it would be easy.  Wrong wrong wrong.  The bike didn't have a single flat spot.  Thank god the last 1 mile of the run was flat.  My overall time was 1:21:25.  Here's the break-down:

Overall placement:
Swim:  26/610; 3/92 in 40-44 year old division
Bike:  122/610; 26/92 in 40-44 year old division
Run:  85/610: 16/92 in 40-44 year old division

My swim was decent but I thought it could have used improvement.  For one, I needed to actually swim in the 2 weeks prior to the triathlon.  My local pool closed during these 2 weeks and despite good intentions to visit another pool, I didn't happen.  And now my back is really sore!  Also, I needed to sight my swim pathway more often.  I kept swimming towards shore instead of swimming in a straight line and once almost ran smack into a huge orange buoy.  When I do another triathlon next year, I will need to practice some open water swimming.  I will also plan to buy a swimming wetsuit so that I can do some ocean swims.

I felt good on the bike, despite the hills.  I averaged 15.0 mph, which I thought was pretty good given the challenging course.  That being said, it was clearly the worst of my 3 legs of the race.  I definitely held back a bit knowing that I had to get through the run.  I think I was at 90% instead of 100%.  As I do more triathlons, I will hopefully get a better sense of how to pace myself.

I was really proud of my run.  I averaged an 8:26 min/mile pace which is REALLY fast for me.  When training, my fastest average was roughly 8:45 min/mile pace and usually it was slower than that.  I didn't have any more to give on the run and so I know I gave it 100%.

I can't wait to sign up for some more races next year.  I found out that my neighbor also is interested in doing them and so I'll have to coordinate with her.  I plan on doing an Olympic distance triathlon next season (.9 mile swim, 25 mile bike and 6.1 mile run), which will require more dedicated training.  And I need to figure out how to get faster on the bike.