The Day after

Yesterday was the 9th Annual Root River Triathlon in Houston, Minnesota. I competed, as did my sister. In fact, we were partners for one portion.

This was the first triathlon either of us had competed in, so the Root River Triathlon had specific appeal. It was local (about 15 minutes from where we grew up) and featured one unusual tri event: a canoe ride instead of a swim. Because it is so difficult for two mothers of toddlers to practice canoeing, especially for a mid-May event in Minnesota, part of the appeal was the knowledge that we would need to approach this race rather casually. We soon found out, however, that at least 30% of the field has a much less casual approach to the canoeing portion of the triathlon. Many other participants had practiced their strokes. A lot.

We tried our best with the canoeing, but our best included near-constant jokes about ice bergs, apologies for splashing, and a couple of late-race chants for the last bridge to appear.

The bike ride was brutal. We had biked the route of the triathlon the weekend before, so we had an idea of what we were in for. Or so we thought. After our trial ride, we both came away thinking the route was much more manageable than we had anticipated. However, the day we did the pre-ride we hit wind at one corner. Yesterday a 15-25 mile an hour wind was in our face almost the entire time. It was a slow ride, and if you compare last year's results to this year's, you'll find that average bike time was much, much slower.

It should be mentioned that this year the race organizers seem not to have recorded a transition time between the canoe and bike portion, as they have done in previous years. It appears that most of the transition time got added as the bike time, so that also lengthened the average bike time.

The run was good and flat, but fairly hot. I was surprised at how many athletes walked the final event. It's fairly clear from that experience, as well as the gear the athletes brought, that the event attracts more bikers than runners. That was contrary to my assumptions about the race since the run was, proportionally, a longer event than the bike.

My sister and I picked up a lot of things we would do differently. A major thing would be doing more multisport training in the same day. We both commented afterward that it took to about the halfway point in both the bike ride and the run to start feeling our rhythm, when the event went from a struggle to feeling like a challenge we could master. We also need to canoe more. Maybe she and I will do that some this summer and in summers to come, rather than waiting until April before our next Root River Triathlon.

Anyway, if you want results, you can find them here. And if you want the homepage of the race, you can find that here.

Best quote of the day:
"God, even their life jackets are belly shirts."

Edited to include:
One final note about this tri: the support was fantastic. My sister recruited her mother-in-law to watch our two girls so that our husbands could take care of our equipment. It turns out that our husbands did more fishing than equipment wrangling because of the great volunteers at all of the transitions. Now, the husbands did load the canoes and bikes onto and into the cars, so they didn't get off free, but they did make the high school aged volunteers carry the canoes up the hill to the car. These were the same high school volunteers that caught the canoes and brought them to shore in the transition between canoeing and biking. Another great feature was the elementary school aged kids at the water stop. They were so excited to be passing out water, you felt bad when you turned it down.