Bold Eagle Triathlon

I competed in the Bold Eagle triathlon in Navarre, FL yesterday.  It wasn't one that I was planning on doing.  It was a last minute decision, I figured I may as well do it since it was close and I figured it would be a fun longer training day.  The race was a disaster though.  I hadn't heard great things about the race directors, but I had done the same race last year and it wasn't too bad.  However, this year they tried doing a half-ironman race at the same time as the olympic and it was an epic failure. 
      The people putting on the race decided they didn't want to create two swim courses so they had everyone do the half-iron distance (1.2 miles) which was okay because they at least let us know that beforehand.  The swim was in the bay and we basically just did an out and back course.  The water was pretty calm, but I was dreading getting in because a cold front came in overnight and I was freezing.  Once I got in it wasn't too bad though.

     Getting on the bike was a different story.  Being wet and having the temperature around 55-60 made for a pretty chilly bike ride.  It took me about two-thirds of the ride to warm up.  The bike course was the disaster of the race.  It was way more complicated than it needed to be, there were too many loops and turns, and it was very poorly marked leading to mass confusion about where to go.  About five miles into the ride, as I was riding past a side street one of the volunteers told me I was supposed to turn.  I tried to quickly turn around and ended up crashing my bike...not cool.  Luckily I wasn't going too fast so it wasn't bad, but I ended up with a pretty bloody knee, a swollen and bruised jammed finger, and I had to stop and put my chain back on.  Needless to say, I rode pretty cautiously after that.

      The run went good, it was a pretty simple course, but by then I was so frustrated with the race that I wasn't very motivated.  I did okay, but it wasn't one of my better runs. 

Never more glad to be just about done

     After the race, everyone was pretty upset about the confusion on the bike course.  There were people who had gone all different distances ranging from 17-26 miles (it was supposed to be 25) depending on which loops they did and how many times they did them.  i was just glad to get out of it without any significant injuries or anything.  It was still a pretty good training day, but not a race I'll be doing again.