Race Report: Minuteman Sprint Triathlon

The week preceding the 2010 Minuteman Triathlon was filled with unsettled feelings and tweaked nerves. This being my first triathlon ever I was a bit, shall we say, anxious about the entire endeavor. Granted I had been training to compete since January but there were so many questions left unanswered: How will I do with an open water swim? Can I sight the buoys with any accuracy? How much will it hurt when I get that first kick to the head? How do I want to set up my transition area? All questions that are, I am sure, normal to a newcomer to the sport. Nevertheless, there I was, a week before my first race getting more psyched out about it as each day ticked by.

Mistakes were most certainly made that week. For starters I decided, mostly as a stress relief, to do what I thought was a light leg workout in the gym two days before the event. Much to my dismay this seemingly simple workout left me sore and irritable up to and including the day of the race. In hindsight, I realize that this was quite a foolish decision but Lesson #1 was learned: No strength training before a race. To follow up on this point I also believe that I quickly learned Lesson #2 directly after learning Lesson #1: Running the day after will NOT help get rid of that pesky lactic acid build up. In fact, it makes it worse. Oops.

It is now race day. I was sore. I was tired from having to wake up at stupid-o’clock to drive down to the event. I was nervous. The venue, though, was beautiful. The skies were blue, the water was warm and the air was full of electricity. I could see the minuscule size of the sprint’s swim course (and the immense size of the Patriot’s Half course) and I finally thought to myself ‘I can handle that’. So I prepped my transition area as best I could, did a quick running warm up and got my rear end over to the start line.

There were only minutes left now and as I waded in the water at the start line what once felt like butterflies in my stomach now felt like hummingbirds flapping around. In a strange twist of events I luckily ended up bumping into my coach who, unbeknown st to me, was also racing that day. I got a few last minute pointers on sighting the buoys, which oddly enough helped calm me down even if just a little bit, and hobbled off to assemble with the rest of my heat. It was go time.

Of course things never go one hundred percent the way you want them to on race day. I had mixed feelings about not being able to assemble myself towards the outside of the wave I was going out with (sound advice from my coach that was squashed due to poor positioning and a jetty blocking me at the start line) but there was no time left to get upset about the little things. As the guns went off (yes, guns! The people staging the race actually got minutemen to show up to send us off with rifles…pretty awesome) I dove in and things immediately started to click. Maybe it was the adrenaline or maybe it was my brain simply tuning things out but the soreness was no longer existent in my legs, the butterflies subsided and I quickly fell into a rhythm during my swim. Things were going fairly well, or perhaps I should say that I felt comfortable in the water, and I had just passed the first buoy when I learned Lesson #3: Don’t rely on following someone else’s wake to help you with sighting. Chances are that they don’t know where they are going either. It was a minor mistake but a mistake nonetheless. I had been focusing more on swimming and less on making sure that I was headed in a straight line towards the next buoy and as a result I began to just trust in following other people’s wakes. This mistake only cost me a few seconds in getting back on track but needless to say I will not be doing that again.

So then, boom, the swim was over for me in less than eight minutes and I was on the fast track to learning a boat load of lessons in the transition area. For starters, I was feeling a bit turned around once I got in there and it took me a minute to simply locate my bike (Lesson #4: memorize the location of your bike). Once I get to the darn thing I am getting my shoes on, putting on my helmet and getting ready to put my emergency flat gear in my back pockets when I realize the biggest mistake of the day. I had my spare tube, my tires levers and even my pump, but what good is a pump without the CO2 to inflate the tire with? Lesson #5: Don’t be a dumb@$$ (D’oh). So screw it. I grabbed my bike and my gloves and started running out of the transition area. As I was leaving the transition and saddling up on my ride, still feeling dizzy from the swim, I began to attempt to put my gloves on as I am riding. Why didn’t I put my gloves on in the transition area you might ask? Yup, Lesson #6 slapped me in the face as I almost took a spill coming out onto the bike course from nearly losing my balance from trying to put my gloves on mid-ride. I recovered from that near race-ender, finally get one glove on and try to put on the other when I realize that I grabbed two left handed gloves (please refer to Lesson #5 on this one). So, no gloves it was for the rest of the race.

Luckily once I got going on the bike (and after slamming down a Power Gel®) I was able to get into a smooth rhythm. The course was perfect for a new guy: flat and fast. I spent most of the ride passing/being passed by the same group of riders. I think there were maybe three of us that kept rotating positions on the field which actually worked out in my favor because it gave me someone to chase that I knew I could match pace with. My one complaint about the ride was that at one of the turns the course marshal did not call out which way to turn and as a result I took a wrong turn and lost a few seconds backtracking as she yelled from behind that I was going the wrong way (yeah, that would have been nice to know before taking the turn!). I felt strong for the entire ride and only got passed by a few people during the course…granted a few of those were elite women who had made up over three minutes to catch up to me, but that’s neither here nor there and I give them complete respect for doing so.

Transition number two went much better than number one did. I was in, I was out and I was on my way to the finish line. It did take me longer than expected to feel my stride come in during the run. I probably could have afforded to do a few more brick workouts before the race because it took me about a mile and a half until my legs finally felt good. The course was once again beautiful. Slight rolling hills and long flat sections of road that weaved through nice shady trees (which were nice on such a hot day) was par for the course. Other than the fact that once again one of the turns was not marshaled very well and I ended up losing some time due to taking yet another wrong turn (I have lost track of what lesson number this is but memorizing the course before the race is definitely key) the rest of the run went as expected with the exception of feeling a little tenderness around the sight of an old injury. I had to tone back the run a little bit because of this and ended up getting passed by maybe four or five more people but I think that preventing re-injury was definitely worth the loss in placement.

As I rounded the bend that led into the finish line I could feel that I was pretty sore but was so excited to be mere moments away from finishing my first race. I rounded the final bend and could hear the crowd cheering loudly as I streamed toward the line. I was able to dig deep and push hard and actually beat out one guy in the last one hundred feet of the race. It had been a long time since I had felt as tired as I did when I crossed the line but it was well worth it. A 0.25 mile swim, 15 mile bike and 4 mile run in 1:22:16. Second in my age group and twenty fourth overall. I don’t think I could ask anymore from my first race. My nerves about competing in the multi-sport world have finally been settled and I look forward to a lifetime of improvement.

Mark Slater
Race Age 25
Boston University Triathlon Team