Turtle Crawl...jellyfish haul...

Greggy "I'm running like a freak" Carr, Danny "I own the bike and swim" Domingo, and Myself ("Come on guys, wait for me!") went up to Jekyll Island to do the Turtle Crawl Triathlon. It is Olympic distance, and would be a great workout...and it's a good cause.

The weather was great, but got a little hot on the run portion...but overall a great day. The swim was a time trial start, where they started two swimmers every 5 or 10 seconds...then you would sprint into the water and head for the first buoy. Your start order was based on the time you submitted as your approximate finish. I started 21st, with Danny and Greg starting up further.

Going around the first buoy something bumped into me, I thought it was just another swimmer...it turned out to be jellyfish, and they felt pretty big. I guess they weren't the kind that stung because about every other stroke I was grabbing a jellyfish, or swimming over one...it was kind of creepy. Anyhow I was glad to get out of the water. I felt pretty good during the whole thing and only 1 or 2 people passed me, and with the time trial start it was nice and spread out without swimming over anyone.

Danny had the second fastest time...some ex-swimmer from Georgia Tech beat him by a couple seconds, but Danny smoked him out of transition 1 by over a minute. Greg was about a minute behind, and I came in 3 minutes down on Danny and 2 down on Greg...although they both put another minute into me during the transition...I've gotta work on that. My T1 is always slow, and I don't attach my shoes to the bike like those guys do, so I clop-clop clop-clop down to the mount line for the bike.

Out on the bike I try to make up some time, and after the first loop I see Greg at a turn-around point, and he has 1 1/2 - 2 minutes on me...but I don't see Danny. I assume he is WAY up the road. It turns out that the volunteers weren't setup for the turn-around when Danny got there, so he went straight...adding 2+ miles to his bike!

I headed into transition 2 and didn't see any bikes, so knew I was doing ok. I knew Greg was in front of me, and heading out of T2 some guy tells me that "he's 35 seconds ahead of you". My legs weren't feeling too spunky, and I was really pounding my feet. It was starting to get hot, so I was dumping water on myself...and my shoes absorbed all the extra water...squish, squish, squish...

I saw Greg in the lead coming back from the run turn-around...and he was going FAST! He ended up running a 36:22 for the 10k. I hit the turn-around in second, but there were runners closing fast, one of them being Danny. As I was blowing up on the return, three people passed me including Danny. I was hoping to be right around/under 40 minutes, but slogged home in 42:59.

Greg won, Danny was 4th and I was 5th overall. I'm not sure what was wrong with my legs on the run, but hopefully they'll come around for the Gulf Coast triathlon next weekend. The good part is that I was happy with the bike split, and pleased that I didn't lose tons of time in the water.

Here's the results.

I'll post some pictures when I get them.

Sween