Alta Canyon Triathlon

Today I did the Alta Canyon Triathlon. It was a "mini sprint" which means that it was shorter that a standard sprint distance race. The swim was in a pool and was 400 meters, the bike was 9 miles, and the run was a 5K.


There were a few new things for me on this race:


First, I have never done a tri in a pool. It actually worked out pretty nice. We had to all line up according to how fast we thought we were going to swim. I got in the line at the end of the 6 minute group. Racers were started one at a time and were not allowed to dive. You had to first start your chip by putting your foot on the timing box and then jump in and go. Once you got to an orange flag, the next swimmer would start. There were four lanes and you would swim down and back in one lane and then move on to the second, third, and fourth and do the same thing. I passed the kid ahead of me after about 100 meters.


The second new thing was using my cycling shoes and pedals. I have used them on quite a few training rides, but this was the first race. They worked out really nice, but were a little weird to run in when leaving the T1 and coming into T2.


The last new thing for me on this race was that I actually won something! I came in 3rd in my age division and got a medal for it! I was 42nd overall out of the 172 racers who finished. I finished 26th out of the 65 male racers who finished.


Overall, it was a great even. I seemed to be pretty nice for spectators too since they got to see the racers at several points in the race. There was also a kids race that was a swim and run. We are looking forward to when we can do a father and son race day in a few years...


Thanks to Bina, Jod, and B for coming out to support me!