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Berlin Triathlon 2015

June 8, 2015

Tags: Berlin_Triathlon, Spree, Treptower_Park

Yesterday it was time for the first Triathlon of the year. After a very efficient winter-training with the Swansea Uni triathlon club I got very lazy and actually didn’t swim till last Tuesday, just a few days before the race weekend. Surprisingly that went quite okay… With the limited amount of cycling kilometres and poor run training after the marathon the sprint triathlon in Berlin Treptow was a big gamble.

Because of massive delays in the race schedule I had plenty of time to watch the other races and walk around to take a few photos.

Here the last wave of Olympic distance starters came in from their second lap around the “Insel der Jugend”. To get a better perspective and some shade I walked over the bridge to the island.

In the first image you see the view in swim direction. You might even spot the first buoy. Looking in the other direction, there’s the start line (water start) and on the right side behind all the boats, there is the transition area.

From the other side I got a nice view over the last athletes making their way to the swim exit. Fortunately enough the water still was cold enough for a wet suite even though it was very warm outside.

For me the race started at 3pm. The swim went surprisingly well and I wasn’t even close to being the last one out of the water. This also is a bit disappointing thinking about the little effort I put in for training… Probably it is because I finally got the freestyle technique right and swam through without a break. Okay, to be honest I had to stop once to clear my goggles as they completely fogged up.

The ride went smoothly as well. I took the first two of the five laps alone and let everyone behind me. Only then I found another guy about my abilities and we took it in turns together (notice: drafting was allowed). The last lap, again, I rode alone. All in all a steady performance I guess. My Garmin said I averaged around 37.6km/h, which is acceptable.

Running, as the last leg of the three disciplines was very bad. In the first half I couldn’t really push the pace because I was always close to vomiting. Running a normally easy pace of ~5min/k was the closest thing I could get. But for some reason that was more than enough to catch even more competitors. On the way back to the finish things started to become better and I managed to increase the pace slowly.

As always in these sprint distance triathlons the finish line shows up before you know it and it’s all over. After a quick shower I checked out the result sheets and was surprised about how “good” I was and found my name in the first half of the second sheet:

In numbers:

2015:
72 | 68 | 8 | 1:20:03 | 0:18:03(165) | 0:38:26( 51 ) | 0:23:34( 63 ) | 0:20:01
364 Finishers
http://www.triathlon-service.de/ergebnisse/liste.php?nr=5112

2014:
88 | 77 | 18 | 01:22:13 | 0:21:15(346) | 0:36:28( 37 ) | 0:24:30( 55 ) | 00:20:32
376 Finishers
http://www.triathlon-service.de/ergebnisse/liste.php?nr=4598

2013:
65 | 58 | 8 | 1:20:23 | 0:19:16(234) | 0:38:31( 30 ) | 0:22:36( 88 ) | 0:17:13
http://www.triathlon-service.de/ergebnisse/liste.php?nr=3994
394 Finishers

2012:
57 | 54 | 12 | 1:10:38 | 0:18:28(158) | 0:31:07( 24 ) | 0:21:03( 33 ) | 0:15:13
292 Finishers
http://www.triathlon-service.de/ergebnisse/liste.php?nr=3432

2011:
64 | 59 | 7 | 1:20:56 | 0:19:21(201) | 0:39:18( 37 ) | 0:22:17( 56 ) | 0:19:41
271 Finishers
http://www.triathlon-service.de/ergebnisse/liste.php?nr=2917

Garmin Tracks:
Bike: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/797353584
Run: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/797008235