Greenfield Lightlife Triathlon

Green River Triathlon, my 1st INTERNATIONAL* distance race.

Up at 4am, shower, fill water bottles, raisin bran, apply sunblock (in the darkness of night!) put equipment in the car. I was already completely packed and my bike (an old Univega 10-speed with the clipless pedals from my Mtn bike) was alread on the bike rack and ready to go. Brought a cup of tea to drink on the ride.

4:45am on the road. No traffic at all and drove fast the WHOLE way, 2 hrs on mass pike and I91. Very easy and pleasant drive as the sky got bright.

Arrived with enough time to park, register, set up transition area, get in line for the head, and do a test swim in the river. It was warm and I put on my shortie. There was a sprint and Long race. they started together. The sprinters did shorter part of the river, less laps on the bike course, and had thier own run course. Both races started together at the same time, same place, which seems weird but worked out well.

Swim 0.63 miles,

There was the usual chaos but since we started chest deep and the water was clear and shallow it was very safe. Actually it was too shallow my fingers were hitting the bottom in certain parts which I did not like. Some racers used their feet on the bottom at certain parts which pissed me off. I did my best to swim a straight line but the river curved and so did I. There were several 'waves' grouped by colored swim caps but I couldn't tell how I was doing during the swim. Too much splashing. The whole area is green grass, no sand anywhere, which made the first transition very simple. I thought I swam well and was surprized to get to T1 and see most of the Long bikes were already GONE! What the !!!!??? these guys are fast!

Lessons learned: Swim faster

bike 30 miles,


The bike was four laps of a 7.4 mile loop. It had some huge hills. At one point we go over a covered bridge by a beautiful dam followed by a super steep switchback road. My old ten speed does not have a very low gear so this hill was torture. I wanted to ride the whole thing no matter what and refused to walk my bike up this nasty hill all four times but I think it may have cost me in overall time. I had to stand on the pedals which wears me out fast. I've never biked more than 13 miles before so this was a challenge. I got through it but it is clear to me that I REALLY need to do some long road biking if I am to ever do this race again. I suspect a better bike wouldn't hurt either. I had a baseball cap under my helmet and regretted that every time I went fast enough to crouch into an aero position. The brim blocked my view! When I started the 4th lap I saw people running ALREADY! Again, what the !!! ???

Lessons learned: No visor, or use removable visor. Also pin my number wider across my shirt or it becomes a little parachute. I need some long ride training.

run 7.2 miles.

Yikes, this is a long run. The scariest part was that it was the SAME course as the bike trail. So I had to do the bridge hill AGAIN... on FOOT! I managed to run the whole thing but again, it may have been smarter to have walked the hill. I pushed really hard to pass some guy the last couple of miles but it turned out he wasn't even in my age group. My back hurt the whole run, especially at the begining. This never happened to me before but another racer told me she had the same thing that day and it has nothing to do with running and that it was actually caused by not being used to long BIKE rides. I guess biking uses some back muscles. Who knew? Right before the race an experienced racer saw I had no socks and said that's fine for a sprints but i'd get blisters in the Long race. By mile 5 I could feel the inside of my right foot starting to chafe away. I won't make that mistake again.

Lessons learned: Wear socks. Don't drink TOO much water on the bike cuz you have to carry that in you for the run.

I finished in 3:33:35 . Smooth sailing the whole way. Not to say it was easy. It was NOT. But the weather was decent (hot but dry) and there was water and gatoraid available frequently and people offering to hose us down as we went by. And none of my equipment malfunctioned. The scenery was beautiful and even in the exhaustion of the race I still noticed how nice that was.

I placed towards the very end (of the people that managed to actually finish) and was surprized by that. I thought I would do a little better. Then I found out that the Long race was actually the CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP race. Which explained why my competitors had uniforms on. The non clubbers were probably expected to do the Sprint race. These guys were WAY out of my league. I got trounced by the other 46-49ers but I beat a couple of younger guys and that always makes me feel good. The bike picture above shows the medal we all got. It says "To finish is to win". So I won. Where's my cash prize?

My goal was to finish un-injured and, if possible, to not walk my bike or walk during the run portion at all and I did all that. I enjoyed the race and would do it again (maybe not if its' the club championship, though). It was well run and this is their 24th year doing it.


Post race

I ate some lasagna and drank water and watched the awards ceremony. I convinced some club directors to promote our Hale race in exchange for a registration discount.

I was so tired it was hard to drive back. I spend some quality time with my backyard hammock and just chilled the rest of day. I managed to stay awake til 9:30 pm.


* I thought this was an 'OLYMPIC' distance race but it turns out the bike and run are way too long and the swim is too short. So they call this an 'International' or 'Long' triathlon.