The Richmond Sprint Triathlon -- Sunday October 15th, 2006

The brother Steven and I drove down to Richmond, Virginia on Saturday October 14th to compete in the Richmond Sprint Triathlon. We made it down in time for packet pick up and to go for an easy ride along the bike course for the event. We got a hotel room and all set for the morning before going out to hit the town. We went and got an awesome dinner and mojitos at Havana '59. Then we hopped down to the Tobacco Company for a copious amount of alcoholic beverages, dancing, and met up with some college friends living in the area. We then traversed over to Richbrau for more drinking, dancing, and frolicking before heading back to the hotel at around 2 a.m. Not the kind of night you're supposed to have before a triathlon.

We got up quite a bit hung over at 6:15 a.m. and headed over to the big event. The Richmond Sprint Triathlon is a 400 meter indoor swim, a 20k bike (12.4 miles), and 5k run (3.1 miles). The swim was a snake swim going up and down each of 4 lanes in a 50 meter pool with one swimmer going off every 15 seconds. It was not until about 9 o'clock before it was my turn to take off. My left shoulder was still a little bit tender from the bike wreck a few weekends ago but I was able to make do and get the swim done in 8 minutes 25 seconds. There was quite a run in bare feet from the pool to the transition area and it took me 4 minutes 28 seconds to get from the pool to on my bike. I trucked it on the bike crossing 12.4 miles in 38 minutes 26 seconds and passing dozens of people without any glimpse of a faster biker approaching from behind. The 23:57 5k run was certainly not my fastest of the season as I was experiencing some pretty severe stomach cramps I'm sure from being dehydrated. I wound up crossing the finish line in 1:16:57 good for 77th place overall out of 530 participants and 12th place out of 34 participants in the males age 25-29 group. Steven also crossed the finish line of his first triathlon smiling and in good time finishing 4th in his age group. Check out the adorable picture of the two of us at the finish line. We did have a blast and got to see the nightlife of Richmond but I am going to start taking this whole running and biking thing a little bit more seriously from now on. No more dying during a 5k run because I needed those last few drinks the night before! We'll see how this resolution turns out.