Wrong cleats, Dreadmills, and $1

First let me say that I had a lot fun on Sunday at the Tri U Mah indoor triathlon, but the results could have better. It's nice to get together with an old friend and punish ourselves physically. I had a little trouble parking, mostly because there was a Gophers basketball game vs. #1 Ohio State (the Gophs got beat like a red headed step child), but after that I had time to chat with my friend before we had to get into the pool. So here's the breakdown of each discipline;

Swim: pretty uneventful, its a pool for god's sake. But with that said, it's cool to swim in a pool that the water temperature isn't that of a bathtub. Most times when I swim at the local middle school pool it's so warm that I sweat. Is that normal? Also, this pool doesn't have that crazy chlorine smell, which is nice. My total yardage was 1225. Which is approximately .70 miles. I was hoping for .75. I was satisfied with that as I've only swam 3 times since last September and it's by far my weakest event.

University of MN Aquatic Center

T1: We got 10 minutes to go from the pool to the bike area. We went the the locker room, dried off, changed, and I grabbed my bike shoes and running shoes and then headed upstairs to get on the bikes.

Bike: Here's where things started to go wrong for me. We got upstairs with about 3 minutes to get set up on the bike before our 30 minutes would start. I put on my bike shoes and got on. I immediately couldn't get clipped in, but the seat was too high so I adjusted that and then went back to the pedals. I fought and fought to get clipped in and a couple of the volunteers were trying to help, but it was in vain and the 30 minutes had started, so I decided to make the best of it. I had a couple of options at this point; ditch the bike shoes and pedal in just my socks, jump off and put on my running shoes, or leave it and just try and keep my feet on the pedals. I decided to just pedal with my cleats not locked into the pedals. I don't know if this was the right decision, but it's the one I went with. It only bothered me because I had a certain # in mind as far as distance was concerned and not starting on time and my feet slipping off the pedals made that # harder to attain. I wanted to get to 9.25 miles and ended up with 9.1 miles. I was close to my goal, all things considered, but I think I spent far too much energy trying to "catch up". Oh, the stupidest part of the whole thing is that I should have known my cleats wouldn't work because I have Look pedals and most "standard or universal cleats" are Shimano. Dumb Ass.



The girl on the right was not participating.

 T2: Not much happened here. I changed into my running shoes and then wondered what the beer to car commercial ratio might be during the Super Bowl? What will Fergie be wearing? Will she have a wardrobe malfunction?  Do my shorts make me look fat? You know, normal stuff like that.

The treadmills are in the room behind the bikes.

Run: What can I say, whatever could go wrong, did go wrong. Murphys Law I guess. I knew that 4 miles was a lofty goal, but that's the point of setting a goal right? Anyway, things got off to a rocky start, rather, no start at all. I got on the treadmill with about a minute prior to the start and wanted to start walking a little.  I set the speed at 3.3MPH and then the "horn" sounded to start running. I tried to increase the speed, but it didn't move. I flagged one of the volunteers and they shut off my treadmill and restarted it. That did the trick. I was moving along, but I wasn't feeling I could reach 4 miles, especially after a bad start. I was at 1.89 miles at the 15 minute mark and I was running out of steam. At the 17 minute mark  I was at 2.2 miles and decided to slow down to take a drink. I slowed down, took a drink, and tried to speed back up, but the treadmill had other ideas. I flagged down another volunteer and they put me on another treadmill as they couldn't get it to speed up either. Once I got on the new treadmill, there was 11 minutes left. I lost about 2 minutes and along with the bad start I was out of it mentally. I did 1.1 miles in the last 11 minutes and was done. I was disappointed in the results, but also that it was out of my control.  I don't know if I could have got to 14 miles or not, but I will leave that for another day.
I got home and my 4 year old daughter was stuck her head in the garage and asked how I did and I said that I had fun. She said "good job daddy".  Any disappointment I had, left at that point.

In conclusion, when I got home we had pizza, watched the Super Bowl, and I lost a $1 bet with my buddy, not on the Super Bowl but rather on the race.  Oh well, time to get ready for the half marathon in May.