Quit with the negative waves, man!
The joy of finishing dead last is all you gotta do next time is beat 1 person… 
Seriously, congrats on setting this goal and finishing. I encourage you to follow up as you currently intend. Stick with it, and it gets a lot easier.
You finished.
Hell, you attempted and finished. That is a hell of lot more than I’ll ever do.
Ohmigod! Thank you for posting those.
Do you look like SHIT!
Bwahahahaha!
Oh yeah - congrats and all, but I can’t stop laughing you look like you hurt so bad!
Go get them again tiger!
Did you enjoy the “mercy clap”?
Congrats on finishing. Thats a tough event for anyone let alone someone who has only been training a short while.
Thanks
Luckily I wasn’t the last person to actually finish, due to starting position. So there were a lot of people out of the frame of that picture clapping, having no idea how shitty I did. The crowd seemed so nice though they probably would’ve clapped if I had finished at midnight.
I really did enjoy the cries of good job and keep it up as the other bikers zoomed past me at sports-car speeds.
I think you did great- stop being so hard on yourself, for pete’s sake! A freaking triathalon- how many people can say they even have the guts to try such a thing? You did great and you’ll do even better the next time.
I once finished dead last in a 5K. How’s THAT for embarassing? But hey, getting out there is what counts, no matter if it’s a game of tennis or an Iron Man competition. Great job!
Yeah, but from the looks of that second photo, I bet no one shouted “Looking good!”
(Please realize that I am only laughing so hard because I’ve been there myself. Think of how many folks never experience ANYTHING where they push themselves to the point of utter exhaustion.)
Don’t you know the triathlete mantra?
DFL >> DQ or DNF >> DNS
(Dead Fucking Last is better than DisQualified or Did Not Finish is better than Did Not Show)
I can’t believe I missed this thread until now. I too am a newbie triathlete - I did my first half ironman in October - and have some idea how you feel and felt. Good job finishing! You obviously left nothing on the course, and should be proud of finishing. Do you know how few people can finish a triathlon of any length?
You did not blow anything by taking it easy before the race. A 2 to 3 week taper is pretty standard. Don’t worry about not being a good runner. From what I saw, most triathletes pretty much suck at running. (I’m a runner. I felt like superman, or maybe flash, running. The bike on the other hand …) Concentrate on the bike this winter, and some endurance runs. Just swim enough to stay in shape for it. Build in speed work later in the spring. Next year, you’ll crush this race.
Thanks! How’d you do? Half-Ironman is no joke. Just today I was looking at a quarter Ironman coming up and thinking to myself it’ll be awhile before I’m ready for that. I want to work up to Olympics and maybe halfs but I don’t think I’ll ever be gritty enough to do an Iron-distance.
I’m going to be out of town from March-October of 2007 but as soon as I get back I think I’m going to be doing a lot more of these. I just told my wife I’m a man on a mission for the Feb 18th sprint.
I did pretty well. I’m used to racing (running), and I had a good coach designing my work out schedule, so I was as well prepared as one can be for the first “real one”. (Like you, I did a couple of sprints in a pool first. That was a few years back, though.)
I’m not a bad swimmer, but I was probably 1200m into the swim before I felt comfortable. I’m confident I could knock a few minutes off my swim just from the lessons learned. Be prepared for a lot of contact, and do not use anyone else to site off of. Site off the buoys! I’m not so good on a bike, though. I was near the bottom third of my age group on the bike. However, like I said most triathletes run poorly, so I kicked butt running. If I hadn’t had stopped to take a leak, I’d have won the run leg. So, I looked a bit better than you at the finish. Here are the official race pics. Sadly, I had no support crew to take a picture of me at the finish.
Where did you pee at?!! I had to pee so bad during the race. I drank a Red Bull and a bunch of water before I started and I was still standing in line to get in the pool when I felt that “uh-oh” feeling that I had to go pretty bad. I had to hold it for the whole race and that was no easy task.
Fortunately, they had a lot of johns set up along the run course. And in the transition area, but of course, I didn’t use one then. The race was in Tempe, so they knew everyone would be trying hard to stay hydrated.
I remember that race - they had a full Iron the same day, right? How come you didn’t come to the one I just did? It was in Anthem.
It would’ve been nice if they’d had porta-johns somewhere but since it was a sprint I probably would’ve been the only one to stop.
Tempe actually has a lot of tris. I did the Soma, which was the weekend before Halloween. It was a half and a quarter.
I didn’t do yours because I didn’t know about it. And, if I didn’t have an offseason, there would be no Mrs. Slow.
