Benbrook Triathlon 300 yard swim, 13.8 mile bike, 3.1 mile run

After suffering through a knee injury for a couple of months and missing a couple of races I was pretty excited to get out to my first tri of the season. The race was at a new venue south of Fortworth which I found after a couple of wrong turns. (Mapquest is apparently not always correct )

I arrived and saw a couple of people I know from the Dallas Tri Geeks club as well as some people from TriNewbies. The race started pretty promptly just after 7:00 am. I had seeded myself with a 5:29 swim time just to avoid the clogged up 5:30 time. I hit the water, passed one person who kindly stopped at a wall for me and then had clear water the rest of the way with no one in front or behind. One of the easiest pool swims I've had. Final swim time was 5:27.

After a pretty quick transition I headed out on the bike. The course was an out and back on closed roads through a park. I thought the course was great with a lot of corners and some rolling hills including one large one that caused me to get out of my saddle just before the turnaround. My only complaint was descending at around 30MPH around some of the corners brought me pretty close to people coming the other way who were passing people going uphill. Other than than that this is probably one of the best sprint bike courses I've seen around Dallas. (Although I would have thrown on an extra couple of miles for the bikers I finished the bike in 35:15 good for around 21.5 MPH which felt pretty good considering the wind.

I knew I wasn't prepared for the run. My longest run since February only been 5km . My goal was to just push hard and beat Olen from the Dallas Tri Geeks. The run was 'Y' shaped with two out and backs so you got to see a lot of the other runners. I kept a pretty steady pace and ended up with around 26 minutes. Appallingly slow even by my standards but I felt that I had pushed as hard as my limited training had allowed. Overall I ended up finishing with a 1:12:20 time good enough for 7th in my age group and 41st overall.

After the race I finally met several Tri-newbies including Jen, Eddie, Bets, and Pam all of whom had great races. Overall this was a good start for my season and this was a great race course, one of the better ones in the Dallas area.