Riviera Beach Triathlon Recap

With just under twenty-three weeks until the Ironman 70.3 Miami, I completed the Riviera Beach Triathlon on Sunday.  This is one of the Family Fitness Weekend series of triathlons.  It’s the first of this series that I have ever complete.  Touted as a sprint distance tri, yet with slightly higher distances (600m Swim, 15.5 mile Bike, 3.5 mile Run), it was a fun, and challenging triathlon.

The wind was blowing on Sunday a.m., so much so that they were unable to get all of the buoys out on the swim course.  The race was delayed at least 10 minutes and they finally told us to turn at the lifeguard.  In addition, the wind contributed to very rough waters.  Many people were changing to the duathlon at the last minute.  I decided to go for it.  It was no worse than the Nautica South Beach Tri last month.

As I hit the water, it reminded me of my last tri in South Beach.  I decided early on to do the side stroke instead of freestyle.  Being out of breath, it’s a lot easier to do a side stroke as my head is out of the water the whole time.  After turning at the first buoy, I tried freestyle every now and then, but mostly did the side stroke.  Only two people asked me if I was okay :).  Total swim time 20 minutes.

Once on the bike, I was feeling good and wanted to test my new cassette and high cadence training.  The course was two loops, with traffic, and in the first mile I saw a rider that had crashed or been crashed into, I don’t know, but the firemen were there and he was sprawled on the ground, no bike in sight.  The course was easy, but windy, and quite bumpy at times.  It felt like cobblestones.  My water bottle was giving me fits.  One of the rubber bands had broken so it was mostly held on by the velcro.  My Garmin Forerunner 305 was also coming loose off my wrist, so I lost a lot of time fiddling with equipment.  In the end, I passed many people and maintained an average cadence of 95.  Total time 49:25 with an average speed of 18.81 mph!  My best time ever.

I was fairly tired when I hit the pavement for the run course.  There was a water stop right out of the gate, which I walked through.  I somehow manage to get myself running, and only walked when I went through the water stops.  It was two loops through the neighborhood before finally turning left down the finisher’s chute.  Total time was 40:18 with an 11:30 pace.  That’s about right for me.

Overall, I came in 29 out of 33 in my category (M45-49) and had a good time.