Fat Tire Triathlon

I did one triathlon this year. I kendra got into triathlons after we met. She did her first one two years ago, but I was out of the country during it, so last year she did a sprint triathlon and I watched the whole thing. This year we wanted to do a triathlon together so after looking for a while we chose the Fat Tire Triathlon. It is an off road triathlon (mountain biking and trail running) with an open water lake swim. It takes place near Fort Collins at the Horsetooth Reservoir.

We picked this race partly because it was close to our wedding, but not too close. We thought that it would be at a good time that would encourage us to work out until close to our wedding, but be over soon enough to allow us enough time to dedicate to finish our wedding planning. However, we were so busy with planning most of the summer that we didn't get to train for our race nearly as much as we hoped. I got lots of swimming in and biking, but hardly any running.

Because of this I decided to do the swim as fast as I could, but then wait for kendra (she started 10 minutes after me) in the transition zone so that we could bike and run together. I did the swim in about 12 minutes, which I was pleased with, and then spent over 17 minutes in the transition zone waiting for kendra. It was well worth the wait because I had a blast riding and running with her.

Kendra did a great job in the race! She didn't get scared at all on the swim (even though it was her first open water swim) and swam freestyle the whole way! She didn't even have a wetsuit to use! The water was about 70 degrees, but the air temp was probably around 50 so the water felt warm in comparison. It had rained most of the night before so they weren't even sure if the state park was going to let us do the race on the original course.

Kendra had a good bike ride, pushing hard the entire time. She did fall twice though (spralling out across the entire trail), but she got right back on and kept going both times. The bike was on some fairly mellow, rolling singletrack. The only annoying part was passing people and letting people pass on the tight singletrack. The run was pretty much straight up a mountain and then back down, but we were able to keep running the whole way even if it wasn't very fast at times.

Kendra did an amazing job and we both had a great time. The complete results are here.