My Way or the Tri Way

July 27th I raced in the My Way or the Tri Way Triathlon at the Aurora Reservoir. If you are unfamiliar with this race it allows the participants to do the events in any order they want. About half the field still kept the SBR format, but I chose not to. This was my second race and having struggled with the Run during the 5430 Sprint I decided to do that first and then go to the Swim and finish with the Bike. The field was pretty small (only about 300 total racers (triathletes and duathletes)) which I feel made for a more relaxing atmosphere. Everyone started from just outside the transition area and at the sound of the horn took off to whichever event they had chosen to do first. The run went out to the dam and across and then returned on the same route. I decided to stay towards the back of the pack for the start since I’m not a speedy runner, but surprisingly I passed more people than I thought I would. Of the racers who started with the run I was the 15 out of the 41. The swim was actually a little more difficult than I had expected. Since I did that event second and the racer in front of me was about 2 minutes ahead, there was no real aid in direction. The buoys marking the turn around were directly into the sun which made judging them difficult and not having any other swimmers around to follow meant I was on my own and had to check my line more frequently than I remember doing in June. I did eventually pass 3 or 4 others, but my time was probably a little slower than it could have been. Finally came the Bike. I was able to pass several participants during this section. Quite a few people had mountain or cruiser styled bikes, so I imagine this was a first time for some of them. There was one guy who I passed that on the next uphill he passed me, I passed him again after the crest, but once again he passed me and was able to keep ahead of me by a fair margin the last mile back to transition. As for my results, I was able to do the swim in 1:30 less than I did in June, the Bike was at about the same pace, but the run was faster by 1:15 per mile. That gave me a placing of 66 out of the 240+ total triathletes and 5th out of the 25 participants doing the Run-Swim-Bike formatted race. I am definitely happy with my performance and look forward to the Crescent Moon Tri in Sept. Here are some pics from the event...