My first Triathlon

Most people ending up having some sort of story for their first Triathlon, and I thought I would share mine (at the time of writing, also my only Tri).

At the beginning of this past summer, I ran the Ottawa Half-Marathon, which made it my second Half. I had been casually running for a few years and had done a handful of 10Ks as well.
After doing the Ottawa, I realized that although running 21.1K is never easy, it was something that I already knew I could do, so I needed to add on another challenge. I had heard about Triathlon and wanted to eventually steer myself in that direction. Swimming was definitely not a strong point, so I decided to start with biking.
I went out and bought my bike and all the basic required gear for a serious cyclist. I began looking for duathlon to compete in near the area and found the Cornwall Triathlon, which had a duathlon component. So that summer I started cycling a fair bit more, and trying to get ready for it, though to be honest I could have done a lot more training. About a month away from the race, my cousin told me that he was planning on competing in the Montreal Esprit Triathlon. Obviously I took this as a challenge, and decided that if he could do a Tri, so could I. I decided to start getting ready for the Cornwall Tri-a-Tri. Unfortunately, I clearly hate myself, because I figured if my cousin was doing the Olympic distance, I could at the very least do the Sprint instead.
I had not really swam in at least a dozen years. I took some swimming lessons to get an idea of proper form and prepared to rent a wetsuit for the extra buoyancy.

So ya, a month away from the race, I decided to do my first ever Triathlon.

Race day came around, I went to the race, set up my transition area, put on my wetsuit, and went down to the water to wait for the start.
The whistle blew and I WAS OFF!!! I powered strong, passing people quickly right away.
That lasted about 50 meters before my arms got tired.
I got passed by everyone and their mother. I tried front-crawl, breast-stroke, back-stroke, floating backwards. I was wiped out. I finally came out of the water after about a half hour exhausted and I believe third to last out of the water.

I got my wetsuit stripped, waddled my way to my bike and got started the second phase of the race.
I biked through the circuit , finally getting my wind back, and thinking that everything was going to be OK maybe. As I reached the end of the circuit, volunteers saw me and wave me back into transition. I ran the last phase of the race tired but uneventfully. When I got to the finish line I got my medal, and saw that I had placed 9th / 11 for my age group. Not bad for my first race right?
I ate some food and for while walking around the finish area, decided to see how other racers had done. This was when I realized that my name was now near the bottom of the page, with a DQ next to it.

It turns out that in my exhaustion, I had missed a second lap on my bike. I had taken so long in the water that the volunteers waving me into transition must have thought I had already done both laps.
Worst part is, the speedometer that I ordered off of Amazon came in the mail the next day, which would have let me realize I had only bike half the distance.

So there it is, my first Triathlon story. Ill be registering for the Sprint again for next year, and taking my revenge on the course.
I’m also not ready to give up on Tri. I know I can do better and am obviously already training for an Olympic distance with Team in Training.

Lesson learned: Know the course, and give yourself time to train!

Thanks for reading!

Keep Tri-ing!