Seafair Sprint (but we thought it was Olympic) Relay Triathlon Race Report

.5 mile swim (Steph) - 13.30

12 mile bike (Heather) - 36.12

5k run (Aarthy) - 24.36

Going on 2.5 hours of sleep, I woke up Sunday morning at 4:30am for the Seafair Triathlon.  As my knee is in pretty bad shape these days, I was only doing the swim leg of a relay.  Heather would be doing the bike and Aarthy the run.

I showed up at the park around 5:15am with plenty of time for a warm-up before the anticipated 6am start time.  Well, as we were a relay group and Heather kindly picked up all our packets the day before, I was not able to get into the transition area until she showed up.  I don't think Josh enjoyed my 5:30am call to see if she was on her way as Heather's phone was dead.

Waiting outside of the transition entrance I was able to gawk at all of fancy bikes and gear many people had.  I ran into Rusty Pruden who was assisting a legally blind triathlete and chatted with them for a bit.  Amazing.

Aaron and Rusty at the finish

Heather and Aarthy joined me and we set up in the relay section of transition.  As we were chatting with others, we soon learned a few things.

1. The relay triathlon was only a sprint distance, not olympic distance
2. The relay start wasn't until 8am (currently around 6am)
3. Try to stay warm for the next 2 hours

So we watched all of the olympic waves start, waited 23 minutes, then the sprint waves started.  I got a tiny warm-up, just enough to get wet and get moving.  They grouped us with the men 40-49 age group.

As I am a decent swimmer, I am used to getting a jump start and having some space in the swim leg of triathlons.  As we rounded the first buoy and I was still fighting my way through, I remembered that this was a relay and that all the swimmers out there are good swimmers, hence their reason for doing that leg of the relay. 

Since I have started regularly doing triathlons, I have trained my body to put a lot more effort in my pulling, rather than kicking as you need your legs for the bike and run.  I quickly had to focus my efforts in reminding myself to kick, and kick hard as this was .5 mile sprint.  I originally had hoped (when we thought we were doing the olympic distance) to break a 25 minute mile so I knew that this was a good chance to see how fast I could go.  However, with the lack of warm-up and the not warm weather/water, my breathing and stroke were not as smooth as I would have liked.

To transition where Heather totally kicked butt on the bike and tried out aerobars for nearly the first time.  It was pretty windy and she felt it on the ride.  It was interesting to watch all of the relay legs come in as everyone was actually sprinting on the legs.  I am so used to seeing endurance races that I really enjoyed watching people putting their everything into one part of the race.

Aarthy took off in her cute lululemon top and Heather I wandered over to the finish line to get some food.  I had to convince a volunteer that I really was in the triathlon in order to grab some noms. (I did a deck change right after the swim to get warm).

Aarthy came in quickly and we cheered and took this sweet photo where I look like a giant.

Winner winner, chicken dinner.

This is our official winner's photo as we were too cold to stick around for the awards ceremony.  If we did stick around, we would have gotten an award as 

We won the all-female relay!

Maybe next time I will swim more than once in the 6 months before the race.  Well done ladies, I can't wait for the next one!