The crowd is screaming, I'm dripping wet, holding a wet suit and running bare foot. This is what the transition is like as you run roughly 2/3rds of a block to reach the tent area. There is a spotter yelling out bib numbers to volunteers near the bike transition bags so that when you run by the bag is being handed to you. My bike bag was in the farthest corner of the bike transition bags so this saved several seconds of searching amongst the rows. I took my stuff to a bench outside the changing tent and immediately had a nice lady assist me in the transition.
I dumped out the bag immediately stuffing the wetsuit into it with my goggles and swim cap. I had a towel from the Hyatt that I put down attempting to clean my feet off before putting on socks. I needed help to put on my CEP compression sleeves holding out my feet one at a time while the lady pushed them up my calf. This is where I think the velcro attachment to my timing chip was loosened. I next needed help putting on my pearl izumi arm warmers and reattaching my garmin to it's watch mount. I needed assistance putting on the tight garments because not only am I soaking wet at this time, but also fairly cold leaving my fingers/toes much less affective. A few more good wipe downs on my feet to get the grass off and I was putting my socks on. Shoes came next, gloves and next thing I knew I was wearing sunglasses as well as my bike helmet. The last item to don was a race belt. I wore one that already contained my salt pills and a bottle of extra chamois cream in pockets.
In the future I would consider doing the swim wearing my compression sleeves because they would dry off fairly quick and it about a minute just to get them on. By bypassing the changing tent I also accidentally bypassed the sun screen people. I had already put on a coat during the morning so I took the risk of heading out on the bike without it. When you tell the volunteer aiding you they will take your transition bag off your hands letting you just walk away. As with the bags someone yells out your bib number and as you walk through the rows of bikes, your chariot appears out of no where being handed to you in stride. The last leg of this transition journey is to simply walk, or jog with your bike to the end of the transition area and mount up to begin the bike leg. This jog is across an uneven grassy area and running with shoes that contain bike cleats makes everything interesting.
Approaching the line to mount the bike I make sure I cross directly over the timing chip matt. Crossing it with several other athletes I assumed that one of the beeps going off was to hack my start to the bike leg. This was not the case. I don't know still where the timing chip went, but do know that it never left the transition area. I also looked down when straddling the bike to clip in and begin pedaling to see that an entire bottle of 4 power bar gels fell out off my bike. All I could do at that time was curse and begin thinking about how to adjust my nutrition plan. I thought no sun screen and the loss of my bottle were the only pit falls on this transition, but with the loss of my timing chip I just can't give myself a very good grade. I did set a new PR for timing, getting everything done quicker, but now I need to do the same thing more effectively.
It was good to have a plan, but also worth taking a couple extra seconds to just calm down and breathe if thats what it takes to not miss such big things.
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