Race Preview - Guelph Lake Weekend (Try-a-Tri)

My first race is nearing..THIS Saturday, June 18th I'm going to be competing my first try-a-tri. The race is a part of the Subaru Triathlon Series and is located in the city of Guelph in the Guelph Lake Conservation Area. I chose to start with a try-a-triathlon mainly because I wanted to get a sense of what an open water swim would be like at a manageable distance.

Race Details
Swim - 375m
Bike - 10km
Run - 2.5km

I'm happy that the start time of this race is @ 10am, as opposed to the usual 8-9am starts that usually happen in the Subaru Triathon Series events. Each additional minute of sleep is huge for me haha. Registration for the race begins at 8:30am that morning, so unfortunately I'm still going to have to get up quite early and make my way out to Guelph. Luckily, its not TOO far away, only about a 40 minute drive or so.

I also found out recently that the race is now sold out so I'm expecting there to be well over 300 people just in my race. Last year this race had 366 people, and the year before that close to 400. I'm anticipating the race to have approximately the same numbers.

Since my training schedule was made prior to registering for the race, Week 10 has become my tapering week. Tapering is:

(stolen from some site)
"The taper at its essence is simple: Reduce your overall training volume while maintaining or even slightly increasing your intensity. For purposes of this essay let's define intensity as training at or higher than your goal race pace."

So basically by tapering, I am allowing my muscles to fully recover so I am able to peak at the right time (Saturday). So the more someone trains normally, the longer the process will take.


How I feel right now
Phyiscally, I know that I am more than ready. Mentally, I'm still getting there. Hopefully come racetime I'll be okay.

For motivation, I'm definitely going to watch this video several times come Friday and Saturday morning. It's such a sweet video. I've only watched it once, so I can watch it fresh come race day, and hopefully it'll inspire me. You should definitely check it out!

Goals
It's honestly so hard to gauge at all how I'll finish among the other competitors since this is my first tri.

Expectations
Swim: I'd like to be able to finish and still feel pretty good afterwards. A sub 9 min 30 second time would be nice?

T1: As of right now, I haven't really practiced or even thought about the first transition. But...rip off wetsuit AFAP (as fast as possible), get into bike gear and go. I'm going to have to practice taking off the wetsuit a few times this week.

Bike: I've never experienced a swim to bike transition so it's going to be interesting. I haven't figured out the gearing to my road bike yet but I'm sure as long as I save my legs during the swim, I expect the bike to be okay.

T2: Take off clips and get into runners AFAP. I also haven't thought about this transition too much either. Having my shoes untied and ready to step into easily is key though I think.

Run: Book it!! Hopefully I'll still have some gas left in the tank.

* If anyone would like to come watch the races, message me and we can figure out rides and stuff. Would love to have you guys there to support!