(Photo courtesy of Jonathan)
Because it wouldn’t work to go to Florida for the first of the Para Qualifying Series races, I went looking for other Triathlons in April. I found two in North Carolina that were relatively close to each other. After Jonathan confirmed he could guide for me, I made plans.
Day 1 (Belew Lake):
After having to move transition around a few times and pre-race photos, we got in line for the swim start.
In the past few years, I’ve had issues with breathing in the wetsuit. It seems to cause problems with breathing at some times and then be fine at others. This race was unfortunately the former, and I had to stop several times to catch my breath.
Once out of the water, we went out on what I would consider a technical, lolipop course. I was a bit uncomfortable from the continual curves and hills. The run was almost all hills — but was still a solid run for all of that.
Day 2 (Cal Tri Charlotte):
In the past, I’ve had races where the RD has called off the swim an hour or more due to weather (making it a run/bike/run). But until this race, I’ve never had the swim called that close to the start…
As we were heading down to the beach (less than 5 minutes prior to start), we were all told the swim had been cancelled. So after a short run from swim start to and around T1, we headed out into the wind and rain for an extremely challenging bike.
The bike was about a 16 mile lolipop, during which there were heavy winds and rain. This meant I was holding on tighter than usual, which led to me going numb early. We did make it through safely after a couple of stops — but I did have a momentary thought of throwing in the towel at about 10 miles of this challenging bike course.
After a normal T2, we headed out on the most challenging run that I’ve had during a Sprint Tri. It wasn’t so much the hills (which I’d had the day before). It was the fact that the third “prong” of the run had us going on a dirt trail into woods, like you would for an OCR.
I’m extremely grateful to Jonathan for all of his guiding, help, and support throughout the weekend. I am also grateful to the RDs and staff of both races for all their help and support.
