We did a triathlon. It hurt.
Sunday April 3rd was the Spineworks Triathlon in Colorado Springs. Nikki and I have been preparing on and off since November for a Triathlon and this was the first actual triathlon available in Colorado. It was the day after daylight savings time change and being in Colorado springs with registration from 7:00 to 7:45 we got up at 5:30 (which felt like 4:30). Blech.
It’s a slightly different race since the swim is in the pool and is staggered. I shared lane 5 with a nice gentleman in the 8:20 wave. Nikki shared lane 3 with some nice ladies in the 9:00 wave. They have you dry off your arm and then write your swim time on your arm in sharpie. Once people are done swimming, they drive over to the bike/run area and get their gear organized for the bike-to-run transition which is “on the clock.” Once everyone is ready, they start a great big clock on the starting line. As your swim time shows up on the clock, you start biking. That way everyone is in the right order and you know that if someone is in front of you…they are really in front of you. It also prevents bunching on the trail, which was about 4 feet wide.
The bike and run portions went about as well as can be expected. The race is in the foothills of the Rockies, so it was actually a really varied course. One big uphill and one big downhill on the loop with lots of little interesting sections along the way. The course does three loops of the bike section and 2 loops of the running section - and they are on the same trail for a little while, but you travel in opposite directions, so there weren’t any collision problems.
