Well done making the best out of a tough situation.
I think I would really like aqua-thon (swim-run) if those are an actual thing. I am just terrible on the bike, maybe a few more years under my belt and I won’t be so bad, but for now I just have to get use to people flying buy me when on 2 wheels.
On a Garmin edge 500:
10 sec power (largest number at top)
Current speed (large number underneath)
Then underneath (smaller) in a 2rows x2 columns arrangement:
time, distance, average speed, cadence
Mainly just focus on power, but look at speed on uphills to see if worth getting out of aero bars uphill or when to really focus on aero position.
The bottom 4 are really just to keep track of progress, glance at avg speed and distance to gauge how going against RPE and expected performance. Cadence…more because had spare data field, but I do TT at fairly lowish cadence (around 80-85 rpm) so keeps track.
Im doing a Sprint in Sept, but was considering Aquabike only in the future…my run is just too slow.
It’s so fun to just lay it all out there on the bike when you know you’re not saving anything for the run
Sounds soooo enticing.
Ha ha that’s how I did the Tri on Sunday - my run was funny slow.
Sprint distance is definitely underrated.
To me the most appealing part of multisport is theres always another way to mix and match the sports. I’m currently not swimming because of life factors and I’m throwing myself into Duathlon rather than getting down about not being able to do tri.
Had an Oly today in a small town 2hr south of Minneapolis. Not a ton of people for the Oly race (21 total) and I only got 3rd with a 2:04. Goes to show it’s not how fast you are but who shows up! They did have quite a few do the sprint and had a 5k as well. (The 5k seemed to get a lot of the supportive husbands and wives not interested in triathlon but still athletic something fun to do. Great idea!) So given the size of the town and that a lot of locals are doing Des Moines 70.3 tomorrow they had a good draw.
I’ll do a more detailed write up later today after some hard earned pizza!
Holy crap, a 2:04 Olympic off of 7.5 hours of training the last 6 months? Was the bike downhill or what? Congrats!
Again, more like 11/week for the last 3 months 
Anyways here’s the full writeup for those that care. I do it anyways for myself and might as well share:
The Plan:
Coming into this race I really wanted to see where my fitness was at in preparations for USAT Nationals in August. The course profile is very similar to Milwaukee and I won’t lie, it usually has around 20-40 people doing the Olympic race so I figured this might be a good opportunity to come home with some hardware. Especially after my race 2 weeks ago where I was dealing with blisters, heat, and wind I was hoping for a better time. This also meant going for the flying mount and racing in my new wetsuit vs the cheapo one I bought 5 years ago.
But come Thursday I wasn’t sure if I was going to toe the line. Had to take my dog to the emergency vet as he had begun vomiting, brown urine, and was turning yellow! He (12yr old pitbull mix) ended up getting diagnosed with a pretty severe case of liver cancer and was given around 3-4 months. So something we’ve kind of been preparing for, but still a hard pill to swallow and it felt wrong to bring him home from the ER, then leave him with my wife while I stayed in a hotel and raced the next morning. But discussing it with her and some of my friends we decided that I need to live my life too while also spoiling the crap out of him. So to the race I went.
Raceday Morning:
Race took place in Fairmont MN (Bacon capital of the USA I guess) which is a neat little small town of around 10,000. I described it to my wife as exactly the kind of place Hollywood would choose to shoot a film that took place in a small Midwestern town near a lake. Volunteers were super friendly and got setup in the pretty tiny transition area nice and early. A couple other guys came in, one of whom I recognized from a prior race (he took 8th and me 9th…rival!) while another I knew from name when he put on his team USA suit. Small field but it was going to be on!
Weather was going to be in the 60s Fahrenheit with a decent wind that would hit us in the face for most of the 2nd half of the bike. Fine by be.
Swim:
Disaster! New wetsuit (which I took on 2 previous lake swims in the prior week) blew out at the seam along my leg just before the swim. The guy next to me did mention that he was now officially intimidated, but not exactly what I wanted. The whistle blew and we all began the swim. I held onto the lead swimmers feet for around the first 200m but I could definitely feel the tear in the wetsuit holding me back and pulling at me like a parachute as it kept getting bigger and bigger the more I swam. In hindsight I should have taken it off and stashed it somewhere but oh well. Near the halfway point of the out and back swim course I noted that I was already at least a minute down from the lead guys but still in 3rd, but the 2nd half I slowed even more and was caught by a couple others just before exiting the water with a tear all the way from my knee to my ankle. Swim time 27:05. Yuck!
T1:
Gotta love a small transition area. Stripped off the damaged wetsuit, put on my helmet, and took my bike out. 50 seconds flat.
Bike:
I’d practiced the flying mount more than enough in my driveway, but never after a frustrating 25+min swim. I got on just fine but getting my feet in the shoes was a struggle, especially as there was a steep little kicker of a hill to go up. Were I looking to go as fast as possible I would have put my shoes on in transition, but this was about learning. Lesson learned for sure.
Once my shoes were on and I got settled it was game on! Quickly overtook the couple folks that beat me out of the water and settled into 3rd place, but despite the rolling hills and ability to see really far, I couldn’t locate the two guys ahead of me. We had a tailwind going out and it was amusing watching my average speed tick up all the way to 44km/hr but I knew it was going to be brutal on the way back. There was even one little bit of downhill that I ran out of gears on a 52/11 setup! All for 305W NP. (I was saving a bit for the way back)
Near the turnaround Team USA guy flew past. Based on time/distance I figured he was around 5min ahead of me. 2nd place guy was around 2min ahead of me. On the way back I watched my NP creep up to 320 while my average speed dipped down to around 41km/hr. I did eventually find the 2nd place guy and passed him with 5km to go. We smiled and agreed that it was a “footrace for 2nd.” although given that he ran me down 2 weeks ago, I wasn’t holding out too much hope of taking him today with only 5km on the bike to give myself an advantage. I got off the bike with a time of 58:45. Under an hour was cool, but felt I could have been faster especially pushing a bit more on the way out.
T2:
Small transition area. Fast time. 34 seconds.
Run:
Fast transition but loose shoes??? Oh crap. I forgot to tighten my elastic. Stopped to do that for a couple seconds and when I resumed running I saw the rival only 50m behind me. I held him off until the first kilometer and tried to keep up with him, but his pace was so fast. I was already running 4:00/km already so he must have been doing 3:45ish. I gave up trying to latch on after around 20 seconds and got into running timetrial mode. The route was a lollypop with two loops, and after the 2nd loop I noticed I was still a hair under 5km…must be a short run course. That made me feel pretty good and I kept pushing on. I held my pace pretty steady in the 4:00-4:05 range, teetering on blowing up but not quite. After the 2nd loop I found myself right around 9km and flew to the finish line for a 37:23 run split. A new 10k PR…except the run was around 9.3km. Oh well. Total time 2:04:34 for 3rd place.
Post Analysis:
Rival scorched the run and finished in 2:01:13 while team USA threw down an untouchable 1:57:49. On a legit course Team USA would have been tantalizingly close to 2:00, rival around 2:04 and myself around 2:07. I know I’m not as good a swimmer as Team USA but I have clocked similar times as rival, so without the wetsuit mishap I figure I would have had a similar time to him which would have saved me around 3min give or take (And made for a very exciting run showdown in the last km or so!)
Overall I’m quite pleased with my performance and it was a good day to be out racing. Collected my medal for 1st in my AG (Team USA and Rival are both young bucks) and went home to see my pup who’s doing pretty well and whose spirits are pretty high.
Oh, and wetsuit is getting replaced under warranty as you would expect. Really fast customer support from Roka so kudos to them.
Exciting race report, thanks for sharing and sorry for your bad news.
Nice race, especially with a 300+ watt/sub 59 on the bike. Curious what your height and weight and bike setup is?
Ah, now I know what the key is to a 2:04 Olympic triathlon.
Fast cycling, fast running, fast(er) swimming, as well as a slightly underlength course and tiny transitions. And flying (dis)mounts. Uh, OK. I think I’ll go back to sewing, or whatever.
Extremely well done. Fingers crossed for the dog.
Thanks. I’m kind of a mini-Nate in terms of size. 193cm and 85kg. I ride a Cervelo P2 with 60/90 Flo wheels, GP 5000 Tubeless tires, areo hlemet, and a sleeved tri suit. I’m pretty sure I have the aero side pretty well dialed down. My strength has definitely swung towards the bike over the last couple years due to my general size despite coming into triathlon from a running background.
Great report! All the best to your buddy 
Will be following this thread with interest. Have just signed up for a local sprint tri with my wife. It will be the first one in years having done longer stuff. I’ve decided that I can commit to short course racing on my increasingly limited time budget and stop worrying about about 5am long rides etc!
Currently swimming around 6:10/400m but was down around 5:40 before COVID.
Ride around 22 mins for 10 miles, FTP 280 @ 4.4w/kg.
Run low 16s for 5k, with a sub 16 in the last 12 months.
Crikey, hope you’re not racing in my area! 
Welcome to the thread.
I figured you were probably a pretty big guy. 260 watts will get me under 60 unless the bike leg is <1000ft of climbing. But I’m 10cm shorter and 8-9 kg less. I’ve gone 300+ for a 40k before but I definitely wasn’t planning on running afterwards 
Dang, no joke! Grifter-You seem nasty fast. sub 16 mins for 5k is very impressive. I hope your 22 and married young!
If only! Just turned 40 and chasing 2 young kids around 
