Moss Park Tri

My friend Diana signed up for this event, and I thought it would be fun so I did too. The original plan for her was to compete against her brother, head to head (or as well as possible given wave starts) in the same event in order to settle a family bet about the strength/abilities of male and female athletes, or in reality who between Diana and Gary (her brother) would retain family bragging rights. I decided to do the event rather than just come spectate!

Gary flew in Thursday, and in a surprising move, flew back home Friday to attend to some situation with his girlfriend. Yes... the long awaited battle didn't occur! I'm not sure what happened, and neither is Diana, but I advanced the theory that he was afraid of the competition and created some excuse to back out. She laughed for a bit and mostly agreed.

Overall this was a very well run small event. The swim was kinda muddy, but the bike and run were great. The bike course was a loop through the adjacent neighborhoods, and traffic was so low it felt like they closed the streets for us. I think I saw two or three cars out there. The run was on the trail in the park, which was 80% shady!!

I had a good event except for one issue: a flat tire. ARGH! While I was changing it, I thought of how fortunate I've been overall in events, since this was my first mechanical problem during one. The next closest would be dropping my chain but that's just nothing besides an annoyance.

Once fixed, I finished up and chatted with Diana. I was pretty happy with my results overall:

Moss Park Sprint results

The distances for this sprint were 750 m swim, 12 mi bike, 2.75 mi run. I finished 16th in my division, with a 15:41 swim, 47:13 bike (grrrr), and a 22:26 run. Overall time was 1:31:36.

Thanks to my bike computer, I could tell it took me approximately 11 minutes to change the flat, because my ride time was about 36 minutes. So subtracting that out for my "virtual" finish time, and I get about 1:20, good enough for 8th or 9th in my division! Of course that isn't official but it is what I should have done had I not flatted.

I looked through the photographer site and found a pic of me
during the run. It is currently rotated incorrectly or I'd link the image.

Diana had a great race also, crushing her division to finish 1st in 1:12! After studying the results she said I slacked because I'm a faster biker and runner than her, yet I ran slower (and of course bike time was messed up by my flat). :)