LifeTime Indoor Triathlon

I've been a member of LifeTime Fitness since June. Most locations hold an indoor triathlon at some point during the year, but for whatever reason the location I go to doesn't (so far at least), but the other one in town does. I decided to sign up for the race, held today. I happened to be on the other side of town a week and a half ago, and took the opportunity to scope out the club. It's almost identical to the one I go to, except that it's the mirror image.

I was concerned that I hadn't gotten any information about the race, so I got in touch with someone at the club organizing the event. It turns out that, for whatever reason, a lot of people had the information go into their spam folders. I checked, and sure enough that's what happened to me. The event was staged in waves, one every 20 minutes, starting at 7am. I think I asked for an 8am start time, but there must have been some miscommunication, and I was slated for a 7:20 start. Not a big deal, really. At least I found out the day before hand (and not the day of).

I woke up at about 5:30 this morning, and got to the club about a quarter to 7. I signed in and, for whatever reason, in addition to standard bib number marking on my arms and calf, they put my number and wave number on my hands. I got myself situated and went to the pool. I saw the end of the first wave, which was nine people before getting in the pool with my wave, which was only three people, myself and two women. I lined up next to one woman, who I guessed beforehand was a pretty good swimmer. The other woman was not nearly as fit. I didn't see how well she did, but the woman next to me completely buried me. Before the 10 minutes were up, she was 50 meters ahead of me. The guy recording my distance said he gave me credit for 475 meters, even though I didn't quite finish that 19th lap.

Since there was 10 minutes between the swim and the bike, I took my time in the locker room. I wound up taking too much time and got to the cycle studio about a minute after the 30-minute session had started. They had rigged up the spin bikes with basic cycle computers to show a speed and odometer. I jumped on the bike quickly and started pedaling. I kept my pace fairly steady, with a reported speed in the 28-35 mph range. I ended up with 15.2 miles, which is about what I expected.

In the five minutes between the bike and run, I managed to catch my breath and stretch my legs a little. I started out at 7 mph, then slowly brought the pace up for the first mile, which I finished in under 8 minutes. I had to slow the pace down after that, bringing it down to as slow as 6.5 mph. Towards the end of the second mile, with 4 minutes to go, I started bringing the pace back up. In the last seconds of the 20-minute run period, I jacked up the speed, ending around 8 mph. I finished with 2.39 miles. I probably could have done a little bit better, but it was roughly in the range I was expecting.

Since I was long gone before the last waves started, I have no idea how I did overall. Based on the heat sheet they sent out to everyone, the participants were overwhelmingly female, so at least there wasn't a lot of competition for overall male winner. Still, I'm pretty certain I didn't win (not that expected to), since there was a guy in the first wave who looked like he was doing better than me. The results should be tabulated and posted in the next day or two.