2012 Cayman Islands Sprint Triathlon

Yesterday we both completed our first full sprint triathlon.  It was an early morning wake up at 4:45 a.m. as we had a breakfast of hard boiled eggs, toast and bananas.  At 5:30, Darren, the husband of Andrea - a friend of Katie's, gave us a ride to the transition area since he had a bike rack on his vehicle.  We racked our bikes and got our transition area ready with towels, water bottles and our bike/run clothing laid out. 

 

The swim portion came first and with 124 competitors (51 in the olympic, 52 in the sprint and 21 in the team competition) it was a mass start.  The sprint distance only did one lap of the 750 meter swim course and I finished in 14:40 which actually had me in 12th place overall after that portion.  Katie came in at 17:45 and both of us were in good shape.  Our first transitions went poorly with both of us at over four minutes to get to the bike portion. 

There were crosswinds and swirling headwinds that really affected us both and it pushed both our times over the 50 minute mark for the 20 kilometer ride.  I came in at 53:09 for that portion and Katie at 55:29.  We both plummeted down the standings as we headed to the run.  Our second transitions were better but still below what we had hoped.  By the run I was pretty dead while Katie was getting to her strongest leg.  She caught me by the middle of the second lap and instead of blowing past me as she easily could have, she slowed down and paced me the rest of the way.  I was on the verge of quitting a couple of times, but each time she urged on and at points practically pulled me to the finish line.  Our medals look like dog tags but we wore them proudly.  Our run times came in at 38:19 for her and 43:27 for me.  Overall we finished 49th and 50th at 1 hour 57 minutes 12 seconds for Katie and 1 hour 57 minutes 13 seconds for me.

When we first started training our goal had been 2 hours and 30 minutes.  We moved that up through the training and had set the two hour mark as our goal and 1 hour 50 minutes as the shoot for number.  The transitions and bike portion prevented the shoot for goal but Katie pushing us got us to our overall goal of below 2 hours.  We finished exhausted, but triumphant! 

 

We have both checked another item off our bucket lists.  But as we both noted yesterday evening, we have a double challenge to do a sprint triathlon and the half marathon which comes up in a month so we are only half way to our goal and we are still in training mode for another four weeks to get through that.