The swim went fairly well, was caught slightly off guard by the countdown to the start and wasn’t in quite the best position to start however. Still it’s first race I’ve done in a couple of years, so was really just to get the feel of things again. The bike section was also challenging, I had been having some derailleur issues prior to the race. In the wet these were 10 times worse, with gear changes being a little hit and miss. Come the run, wet and cold and with soaked shoes, I really just wanted to finish the race. The enjoyment factor was starting wane.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the result though, the swim was much better than my first Tri back in 2007 and the time considering the wet conditions and bike issues were reasonable too. Below is some footage of the race from Triathlon New Zealand.

Pre Race / Setup

• Get plenty of sleep during the week before the race, it’s unlikely you’ll sleep well the night before and while one night won’t hurt a whole week of poor sleep will. Early to bed and early up, so you’ll acclimatised to the very early start and not still half sleep on race morning.
• Inflate your tires to race pressure the night before, check them in morning–if you’re got more than a slight pressure drop, change out the inner tube.  You’ll of course pump up the tires in the morning at the race, but you don’t want to discover that you’re got slow leak when you’re on the bike.
• When setting up your bike in transition check the brake pad alignment and that both wheels spin freely.  These can get knocked during transportation and rubbing brake pad in the race is less than undesirable.
• Set the pedal on the chain-ring side to the 1 o’clock position so when you mount the bike out of T1 it’s ready push off on.

Swim

• Choose landmarks above the swim buoys to sight off, like a distinctive tree, boat or building. The buoys themselves are often hidden by the swell and other swimmers, and I you’ll end up slighting more than necessary if you try to use the buoys alone.
• At the end of the swim don’t stand up until you can easily touch the bottom, swimming through water is much more efficient than running though it.
• Scope the swim entry and exit before the race, especially for ocean swims as there might sand bars or holes–thinking you’re finished the swim getting up and running into a hole isn’t fun or effective.
• Put your timing chip under the bottom of your wetsuit leg, so it won’t come off or get in the way during T1.

T1

• On the run from the water to T1, unzip your wetsuit, remove your cap and goggles with one hand and pull the wetsuit down to your waist. As you’re pulling the hand with the googles and cap let go of them in the sleeve. Practice this prior so you know they’ll stay put.
• Have your glasses in your helmet aligned correctly to pull both straight on–front the helmet upside down facing towards you, glasses front of lenses down, bottoms facing towards too.
• Practice putting on your glasses and helmet while removing your wetsuit with your feet. Pull on the wet suit down as far as possible in one movement, hands then do helmet and glasses, feet remove the rest of the wetsuit. Even with a cheap wetsuit like mine this is possible, do T1 drills until it’s second nature.
• On the topic of wetsuit removal, in additional to using lube/baby oil on your forearms, ankles and feet, make sure there’s no rough skin on back of your heels. Get some pumice or similar buff the skin until it’s smooth as, you want the least amount of fiction possible when getting those heels out of the wetsuit.
• Try to get a transition towel in a colour other than white or blue, which are the most common–you want to find your area fast, choose something that stands out.
• Put a little baby powder into your cycling shoes (or running shoes if you’re not going clipless) to help get wet feet into them.
• Just as on the swim find landmarks for the transition in and out, and walk the swim entry and bike exit prior to the race.

Bike

• Practice running while holding the bike by the saddle, the faster you go the easier it is to keep the bike straight.  This stops your legs hitting the pedals, while is likely if you’re holding the bike by the handle bars.
• Near of the end of the bike leg, increase your cadence to get your legs ready to run, also stand on the pedals and dorsiflex your feet a couple of times to stretch them out (try to continue pedalling while doing this).
• Practice dismounting by swinging your right leg over the back of the bike and coast with it between the left leg and the frame, so you can just starting running at the dismount line. I thought this would be really difficult to master, but it was so easy, definitely worth giving a go. If you’re got clipless pedals you’ll need to unstrap your feet and rest your them on your shoes first–best to try this on grass initially, less unpleasant if you screw it up.

T2

• Put your running shoes on your race belt, stops it from being blown away if it’s windy and the race belt should go on last–you can do it up as you’re running out of T2.
• Forget about the socks, they take time to get on and aren’t necessary–practice running without them, it’s more comfortable than you’d think.
• Just as for the cycling shoes, a little baby powder inside your running shoes with help getting sweaty feet into them fast.
• Invest in some elastic shoe laces so you can just pull your shoes on saving precious seconds, these are pretty much a must have.
• Just as on the swim find landmarks for the transition in and out, and walk the bike entry and run exit prior to the race.

Run

• Found nothing for this one, just run really damn fast

Have I missed another good triathlon tip?  Let me know in the comments below…

I’m so far behind with working up my RAW files it’s not funny, and it’s certainly not helped by the fact that I keep taking more photos.  Currently I’m up to April 2009 when we were in Paris, everything up to there is done but there’s still about 1000 exposures to sort through between then and now.

I’m off to watch the Karapiro Half Ironman weekend after next.  A bit practice on my sports photography skills sounds rather good, I don’t get as many opportunities with this subject type as I do with others, however then there’ll be even more photos to work up :-S

Sono davvero spiacente per penuria del notizie. È l’opposto di che cosa potresti pensare, sono stato moltissimo impegnato. Sono anche spiacente per come cattivo il mio italiano è diventato (devo troppo usare del dizionario). Allora, del notizie adesso… Primo, tutti è andando a piano per il mio ritorno in Italia. Al momento il giorno è martedì 08 aprile, arrivando mercoledì 09 aprile a Milano Malpensa. Sarò confermare ne nella settimana prossima o così. Il mio visto lavoro sarà per uno anno, supposizione il governo italiano mi lasciato nuovamente dentro il paese, lol.

Ho molte cose fare primo parto, devo finire il mio software agenzia (la causa principale per la penuria del notizie), è vicino a finito, anche installare Windows 2008 sul server rastrelliero [rack server] (mi piace w2k8 . Sono usare RC1 ora, ma sarà spirare nel giugno quindi devo installato di nuovo primo vado, in più RC1 è beta! Ho un altro triathlon al 23 febbraio in Naiper, ho visitato Napier due weekend fa e il percorso pare bouno, è soprattutto piatto e la nuotata pare ok anche. Sto portando il mio abiti sportivi triathlon, monitor di frequenza cardiaca e cose della nuotata in Italia, ma non la mia bicicletta o tuta subacquea—il logistica di portarle è troppo difficile. Sono stato datare una ragazza buona anche, essere stato un ragazzo impegnato lol

Ok, tempo di cena! Ciao ciao

The english short version: sorry for the lack of news, currently planning on returning to Italy on the 8th of April, been busy finishing my business software, have another tri on the 23th Feb and have been dating a nice girl!

I’m just starting training again for the 2007-08 Triathlon season. This year I’m planning on doing two races. The first is in Rotorua on the 11th of November, which about 6½ weeks away and then the Whangamata race again on the 10th of January.

The Rotorua race is a lake swim, so this should be a bit easier than the ocean swim at Whangamata, though the bike leg of the course is quite hilly so that might be a bit of challenge, followed by a forest run which looks really cool. Whangamata is the exact same course as I did earlier this year, I’d like to see if can improve my time there as well. Both races are approx 400m swim, 16km bike and then a 5.5km run.

I’ve been running for a couple of weeks now and went out on the bike for the first time on saturday. Surprisingly I found my fitness level on the bike was only slightly down on March. Tomorrow I’ll hit the pool for the first time, swimming is my weakest link so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes. This time around I’m not planning on training quite so hard, since towards end it became a bit of a chore. So I’m going to take it easy and enjoy myself, which really the only reason for doing it anyway

During the course of a most productive weekend, which included doing the pending maintenance work on my car and a whole stack of things around the house, I finally got around to copying the coverage of National Triathlon Series off our hard disk video recorder. Ideally it would of been better quality-wise to record it straight to DVD, as the hard disk recorder compresses the video quite heavily, but the coverage of the Whangamata race was shown while I was in Italy and the DVD recorder isn’t ours.

I’ve edited the programme down to just the intro and the coverage of the Whangamata race (the title says Wellington, but someone obviously didn’t proof read it before broadcast! ). The race shown is only the longer Olympic length triathlon, since they were covering 3 events rather than 2 like the earlier episodes they unfortunately didn’t include the sprint length races. However both races covered the same course, just the number of laps differed, so it gives you an idea of what the course was like nonetheless. Something which was missing in the photos I posted which just covered the transition area.

My first triathlon was a bit of a learning experience. I completed the event in a reasonable time of 1:14min, though I had been doing slightly better than that in training. However I hadn’t counted on coming down with a cold and waking up with a sore throat on race day. The swim didn’t go so well, but I managed to complete it and T1 in a time of 18min, finishing 3rd to last. Swimming of course is my least strongest of the three, so just completing the swim was good enough for me! On the bike+T2 I did the course 33min, making up 13 places on way, and the run in 23min making up another 4 places.

It’s good to have the first race out of way, and the next one should go a lot more smoothly. I learnt a few things about the transitions and swim starts which you don’t get training on your own. While I’m looking forward to the next race, it’s nice to have a little free time now for a change

It is now 2 days to till race day now, the final preparations are in place and the weather looks like it may even cooperate as well. I’ve almost completely shaken the slight cold symptoms that have been plaguing me over the last week. My goggles now have a new coating of anti-fog liquid, so I’ll actually be able to see in the water—always a bonus—and my bike now has a new back tire after I discovered a tear in the old one while checking over the bike on Tuesday. All in all everything is ready to go.

This weekend’s training session went much better than last week’s. I had my bike back and was able to do all 3 events back to back. This time to ocean was a lot charmer, however after last week’s near disaster I took a few precautions.

I went out right in front of the Surf Club and also sporting my new swimming cap—if fire engines were yellow, it would of been fire engine yellow! Needless to say I was certainly visible in the water, lol. We have to wear a cap during the race, so i always train in one.

The swim actually went surprisingly well, i did about 400m all up. Although the up/down motion of the ocean does take some getting used to. About 100m out from the beach was a training buoy, which I swam out and around. Training Buoy #4 apparently, according to the writing on side of it. After that I did two laps of the cycle course (32km) and then the 5k run. All in all the training progress is going quite well.