Jersey Genesis Triathlon

Another 4:30am wake up, and another triathlon in the books.  This season's second Triathlon, the 'Jersey Genesis', was the longest distance triathlon I've done thus far.  Half mile swim, 16 mile bike, 4 mile run.  While not a huge leap up from the 'Sprint' distance, it was the next building block on the way toward the Half Ironman in October.

This swim was in a saltwater river that connected to the Atlantic Ocean, and having not grown up around the ocean - my brain always has a momentary stroke when I realize I'm in salt water.  Well, something short of a stroke - maybe just a momentary 'WTF' moment as I taste salt on my lips.

That said, one of the little known facts about salt water is that it increases the buoyancy of anything floating in it - which in this case was my churning mass of a body.  The salt water combined with my wetsuit meant that I had by far my strongest swim in a race, and came out of the water in 58th place out of 261 people.  Pretty solid for me - and I was feeling well nigh euphoric when I came out of the water; for once not feeling like I'd cheated death and glad to be alive.   (Also worth pointing out that in the previous 3 weeks I've been swimming 1.2 miles four times a week - so I cant give all the credit to salt water.)

The rest of the race was a misty, humid, uneventful finish - and I hit all my transitions about as well as possible.  Still room for improvement on the run, as I'm not leaving it all out on the course.

Since you rubes like pictures, let's leave the rest of the story up to the photographers (who grabbed a lot of pictures of me this time around - maybe it helps to be out in front?)

And, if you fellas (or ladies) are still looking for a good reason to get into the sport of Triathlon - I submit for you one last picture...that I nearly missed when I looked through the pictures the first time - as I'm not exactly the focal point of this picture:

I sent these pictures to my parents to have a look, and my mom's response was classic:

Those are great pictures, but if you could run a little faster, you could catch that girl !!! Do they have social hour after the race???


LUV U

Everyone's a critic.