Practicing the Small Stuff

I'm racing the Rocky Mountain State Games Triathlon tomorrow. It's the only local, open water triathlon in Colorado Springs and a very low key event. It's the perfect opportunity to work on the small stuff in preparation for the big events down the road. This event is important to me because I did it last year and messed up LOTS of small things. Let's look at a few of last years mishaps with this years fixes:

#1 Coming out of the first transition, I jumped on my bike. It was a slight uphill start. I had left my gearing as I usually do for a flatter start. When I went to pedal, I could barely move the cranks since I was so over geared. I fell off my bike to the side, remounted and fell again. It was very embarrassing and cost me a lot of time.

The fix: This year, the start is flatter. That being said, I will err on the side of being slightly under geared and work my way through my rear cassette as needed.

Before crashing, life was good!

#2 This was a looped course with a 180 degree turn at the end of each loop. Once you had completed all loops, you bypass the 180 degree turn, stay to your right and ride towards transition 2. I had been riding well after the T1 mishap and was about 10 seconds behind a guy riding equally as well. He veered left and slowed to make his 180 degree turn. He then realized that he was done and didn't need to make this 180 turn, and cut back hard right, directly in front of me. He then inexplicably stopped after he had already cut me off from his turning error. I slammed into his back wheel, my shoe flew off tearing up my big toe and lost my chain. I guess my point is that no matter how well someone can ride, assume they don't know what they are doing and be cautious. This is even more true for this event with a large number of first time triathletes. 

The fix: I will focus on every person in front of me under the assumption that they are newer to the sport and could make a mistake at any time.

Every step hurt.

#3 I started the run with the skin from my big toe gone and bleeding profusely. I was in pain and angry at being taken out by that rider and started hammering on the run. I lost my cool and violated my number one rule of racing, patience. Of course I blew up after starting too hard and had my worst race in many years.

The fix: This year, I will run with patience. I will start fast but controlled knowing I have 18-19 minutes left in me to deliver a good result.

Bottom line is I need to "THINK" through this race tomorrow so things like transition become second nature in future races. After all, the big ones are in September at Ironman 70.3 World Championship and finally, Ironman Arizona in November. No time to screw up the small stuff.