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Well, this post is about a month late, but I wanted to ensure that we got the race results up from the Celebration Triathlon that happened on June 26, 2011. The Celebration Triathlon was very special because it was both Devi and Kylee’s first ever triathlon, and they performed extremely well, coming up with an admirable result to start their tri careers!

Devi finished well ahead of her goal time of 2:30, although she wasn’t too thrilled to not come in ahead of me! Her run was definitely her strongest sport and the swim time wasn’t bad either. She was slightly handicapped on the bike, having not been used to either climbing or clipping in. I suspect this time will decrease rapidly for her next triathlon, especially when she starts bike training.

Kylee also did an excellent job on her first triathlon. She was a little worried about the swim portion of the race, but handled it with easy by taking her time and remaining calm. Her best event was clearly the bike, which she owned at a 15 mph pace! She PR’d the course, but she’ll have to beat her Celebration time come Iron Girl, when she’ll be in the water yet again for the same exact course!

Check out an awesome video from the race! Celebration Triathlon Trailer

This past weekend, Lala and I completed what will probably be the toughest race we do all year (and I have two marathons scheduled!), we completed the Columbia Olympic Triathlon at Lake Centennial in Columbia, MD!

The Columbia is about double the distance as the Nanticoke race- 1.5 km swimming, 40 km biking, and 10 km running — 51.5 grueling kilometers (0.93 miles swimming, 24.85 miles biking, 6.21 miles running). This qualifies the Columbia as an “Olympic” distance event, as opposed to the sprint event I did at Bivalve. There are also Ironman and Half-Ironman distances, but those are a little crazy. A full Ironman is 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run. Half Ironman is half of that. Maybe I’ll get to those distances one day, but not this year!

This was also our first official Team Fight race, so Lala and I had to raise money for it. Thanks again to everyone who donated this go around! For those of you that didn’t, don’t worry, there are still another couple of Team Fight races coming up that you can get involved with! The next Team Fight race is the Celebration Triathlon on June 24– Devi is also competing in this race, so that should be a lot of fun.

Spectators at this race included Devi, Mom, Dad, Kylee, Jen, and Winston- so it was a pretty good crowd. It was also a gorgeous day for it- one of the first races in a long time that hasn’t been plagued with rain. Of course, Lala, Kylee, and I got there at 530 in the morning, so we didn’t really notice the weather, as we were busy being nervous and getting ready for the race!

My race started off with a hitch- namely, I lost my timing chip. So I had to get a new one, and that made me worried my time wouldn’t be official. Luckily I did end up finding my original chip! The swim was great, it felt really good to be in the water, and I swam it really well I think. The bike was also a lot of fun, if hilly. I may have taken it a little too hard, and I forgot one of my three nutritions, because at around mile 4.5 on the run, I bonked hard. My pace on the run slowed from 9:15 min/mile to about 12 min/mile. That was really disappointing, because I might have beat three hours (and my goal was 3:30, which Lala made). But still, it was a good time for a first race.

Now I feel like a real triathlete!

Race Result

There may be some video coming later, but I haven’t quite gone through it yet to see.

Some pictures from the race: