This Sunday morning, I'll be competing in my firt triathlon--the Nautica New York City Triathlon. It's very exciting, but honestly, I'll just be happy to finish. I basically learned to swim this year, and the only stroke I could really figure out how to last a mile at is the breaststroke. So don't count on me breaking any records in the swim.
I told my college roommate that I think it will take me 40-45 minutes to do the swim and he replied, "In that current, a bag of Doritos could finish in 45 minutes."
So, expect me to finish right behind the bag.
Anyway, if you want to see me, here's an estimation of where I'll be and when. If you see me, please tweet out or post a Twitpic and mention my Twitter screename @ceonyc.
I'm looking at the times from last year and eyeballing it makes me think that 40 minutes would be bottom decile--but I am really slow, so let's say 38 minutes is my swim target. Tack on another 6 minutes for transition, since this is my first. I'm getting in the water at 7:33AM, so that means get out of the water at 8:11 and start biking at 8:17AM.
Actually, if you wanted to catch me a few times, you could come by the swim exit/bike start at 8AM on 79th Street, hangout there for a little while, and then head towards Central Park after you see me.
I don't have the best bike in the world, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do the bike in about 1:25. That means I have to average about 17.6MPH and I'm pretty sure I can do that. The route is north to the Mosh parkway in the Bronx, back down to 59th street and then back up to the transition area.
That means I'll be back in the bike transition area at around 9:42. Since I'm just hoping off the bike, ditching it, and running, this should be a quick transition. Let's say 2 minutes. Ok, so I start running at 9:44, and I think I'll be on about an 8:30/mile pace. I definitely want to finish the 10k in less than an hour and it looks like about half of the people did that. I'm a good runner when tired--can run on next to no energy, so I'm cautiously optimistic about being in the top half of the runners. That means I should finish at 10:40 for a total time of 3 hours and 7 minutes. If I were running last year, that would put me just below the median. I'd be very happy with that.
Here's a rough estimate on a map:
