On 6/8/13, I did my first Olympic triathlon: the Daybreak triathlon. The swim part was my first open water swim race. 
I finished the triathlon in the middle of the pack. My swim was pretty terrible but I was expecting that. I finished in 39min, while swimming breast strokes about half of the time. My biggest challenge was the sighting. I was zigzagging the whole time, finding myself occasionally off course on the shores of the lake.. A lot more practice needed...
T1 was was especially horrible. I tried to pre-clip my bike shoes and attach them to the bike with rubber bands but completely failed to put them on while on the bike. I had also forgotten to attach my water bottle to the bike and it took me ages to attach the velcro properly while riding.

The most disappointing part for me had to be the biking. I thought I would perform better, but the result speaks for itself. With an overall age group finish of 22nd / 36 on my total time, my bike ride was just about average. I should not be surprised really. I have not done that much biking yet, and I am still a beginner. I was under the silly illusion that I was better than this. Well... Nothing better to motivate me though. I feel my blood boiling.
I did catch back up a bit on the run, but again, this was a learning experience for me. I started at my 10k pace (the course was 6.5miles) but quickly realized I was not going to be able to sustain it. This was a bit surprising to me. But with the heat (full sun 90 - 95 F) and the accumulated fatigue, I actually suffered in the run and finished at a slow 8:00 min/mile pace in 49min.
 
With the added motivation of this relative disappointment, I started the training pretty hard again.
I have been commuting to work twice a week with my bike and joined a local triathlon club.
The club is absolutely amazing at assisting with my training. On Mondays 6am, we do a group swim workout, Tuesdays are track run workout (6am). 

I had not done speed work in months. Performing them alone was really a chore that I did not enjoy at all. However, with the club, and the other guys pushing me, it's actually really challenging and enjoyable. Thursdays are a higher intensity bike ride for about an hour. I can't always join because it is too early for me (6pm) and sometimes far away from my work. But I have done a uphill canyon time trial (at Emigration Canyon) which helped me measure how mediocre my bike performance currently is. The top guy finished the climb under 26 minutes, while it took me 37min....
 On the week end, I have started doing one long ride and try to maintain one long run as well.
The club also organizes open water sessions once a month and other events that are fun to take part of.
So far, I am trying to hit all the key sessions of my written Excel plan but I am planning to reshuffle it to include the following:

     -SWIM
          1 club swim per week
          1  long swim alone (1 to 1.5 hr)
          1-2 swim alone with intervals with at least 1 open water a week                     practicing sighting 

     -BIKE
          2 commutes to work a week (17.5 miles x4)
          1 interval training with the club on Thursdays if possible
          1 long ride per week (4  - 6hrs)
          1 tempo on week ends (1 - 2 hrs) with intervals or sustained effort
           really want to buy a virtual trainer whenever possible to do some of these workouts in a more controlled manner...

     -RUN
          1 speedwork with the club (Mondays)
          1 long run per week (weekends) 12 miles to 22 miles  
          1 tempo run in the middle of the week (~8 miles)
          I would like to try to keep my running at about 30 miles a week if possible

That is a lot of training for me. A lot more than I have ever done. I am evaluating it at 17 to 23 hours per week. Maybe a bit ambitious and I might need to adjust it down later on. I also have to add some transition practice in there.

Realizing I have so much more to learn, I signed up for 2 more triathlons before the ChesapeakeMan. One is a sprint on 8/10/13, the Herriman triathlon. It will be a good opportunity to put in practice the transition training I am going to do.
Then on 8/24/13, a half Ironman (Utah Half). This will be my final reality check before the Ironman on 9/21/13.

This week, I am putting my training on hold for a few days to join a team doing the Top of Zion relay. A 200 mile run relay race in the southern Utah's National park. I have been wanting to do this race for a couple of years so this is worth my while. I will still use this as a serious run training and since it ends on Saturday, I should have time for a long ride on Sunday.
          

In the last month, following Boston, it got a bit hard motivation wise. Sure I did the 2 / 3 swims a week, a couple of bike rides a week and 1 or 2 runs a week. But the intensityand most importantly the mental wasn't there. 
I fixed my mountain bike and went riding in the trails behind my house (video below). Wow are these trails fantastic or what? Mountain biking is so exciting, more varied than road biking and feels amazingly fast in the downhill portions.
Yesterday I did my first Olympic triathlon which marks the beginning of the official start of my high intensity triathlon training.
How did I do? Well a bit disappointing 'middle of the pack' performance. But really it is a reflection of how my training has been going.
As expected the swim was a bit of a struggle. Effort wise it felt kind of easy but the problem was in staying orientated. I kept swimming too far right, too far left, bumping into other people, and I had to stop and breast stroke every 10- 15 strokes to see where I was going. I completed the 0.9swim in 39 minutes. A bit slower than my pool swims but given all the zig zagging, I could not expect much better.
Coming out of the water I had left some shoes on the pier to help me run to T1. Thank god for that plan. I had modified some old trainers so I could put them on quickly without show laces. 
Like in training I ran out of the water, unzipping my wetsuit and rolling my goggles and swim cap inside the sleeve of my right arm. Unlike in training I realized after running about 50meters that the goggles and cap found their way out of the sleeve and fell down. I had to run back to pick them up (30 sec wasted)
One thing I did not realize is how taxing running our of the water is. I was slow jogging but it somehow felt like a full on sprint. I even got a stitchon my right side. I ran back to T1. I had prepared a foot bath to clean my feet but did not use it. This T1 should have been real fast but it wasn't. I rolled down the suit took it off, wated a bit of time struggling with the sunglasses caught on the straps of the helmet. than ran odd bare foot with thebike. I had carefully attached the bike shoes to the bike with rubber bands like the pros do. After passing the transition mat, I got on the bike (no I did not hop on it like a pro...I did not dare, this will take more training). Unfortunately the exit of the transitiona area was uphill which made it harder to get going on the bike when you don't have the shoes on. I pushed on the pedals and slipped. The rubber bads broke, the bike stopped and I was left awkwardly trying to balance on the bike with the bike shoes rubbing on the floor.
I managed to put my feet back on the top of the shoes and got the bike moving again. Then I realized I had not loosened the shoe's velcro bands... After a minute or two, I managed to put my feet in the shoes and started to accelerate. Then I realized that I had forgotten to attach my water bottle with the velcro band between the aero bars. DAMN! trying to do that while riding is asking for trouble. I took me a good 3- 5 minutes while riding slowly to attach the bottle properly. With all these mistakes, I am guessing I could have saved close to 5 minutes off my total time. Lesson learned I hope.
I started pushing hard on the pedals. Soon I was in cardiac zone 4.5 -  4.7 and passing quite a few people.
When I reached about 1/3 of the bike distance, I decided it would be a good idea to fuel. I munched on some kind of powerbar 300 - 400 cal which was really hard to swallow. The bike ride was fun but also quite challenging with some tough hills.
I passed a couple dozens people on the bike.
When I look at the garmin data, I find that there seems to be a lot of potential to gain time on the flats and downhill as my heart rate quickly drops in the 150's.
Then it was time for the run. T2 went without incidents. However, I did slow down in transition, second guessing myself to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. 
I ran off fairly quickly at first (6:30 pace) but quickly I felt that tackling a run after of couple of hours of other sports is something to get used to. My pace dropped consistently each mile to reach about 8:00 pace towards the end of the run. 48:47 for 6.5 miles is nothing to brag about for me but I have to admit, I was really tired towards the end. The garmin data reflects that as well. My heart rate kept going up and up from the start of the run to the end. The rising heat of an amazingly sunny day didn't help with that either.