First one was London Triathlon back in 2003. Olympic distance race, 5000 participants overall, going off in waves of ~300. I had a decent background in endurance sports having been a fairly serious rower for nearly 10 years, and had done a fair bit of road cycling and running for enjoyment and cross-training so was pretty confident I’d be fine on the bike and run. Was slightly nervous about the swim though, I’d spent a lot of time in pools on holiday and for fun and wasn’t afraid of the water at all, but had never been a lap swimmer and my freestyle technique sucked so I was planning on doing mostly breaststroke. Was also a bit worried about getting out of the wetsuit quickly!
I’d also entered at fairly short notice as a charity place through work so didn’t really have much prep time. My wetsuit arrived about 10 days before the race, which did at least mean that the weekend beforehand I was able to do 1500m (far and away the furthest I’d swum continuously at that point) in a local outdoor 100m pool. The swim worked out OK, I was one of the slowest and got passed by the faster swimmers in the following wave, but my mix of breaststroke and freestyle got me through fairly comfortably and I stayed well out of the way of the faster swimmers. Best bit was how quickly and easily the wetsuit came off with a combination of sun cream, sweat and volunteers!
Transitions were another area of worry. I hadn’t really practiced them but had thought through the logical sequence a lot of times in my head and that seemed to work well. As did having a checklist to make sure I’d laid out everything I needed. Didn’t attempt anything fancy like flying bike mounts or pre-mounted shoes.
My nutrition plan was 750ml of energy drink on the bike, and then water only on the run. That was based on knowing that solids in my stomach while running at anything approaching race intensity always gives me a stitch, and also knowing that I’d done 2+ hour bike rides on water only so figuring out I didn’t need much. Again worked out pretty well, didn’t have any stitches or energy issues and it’s basically what I’ve stuck to for Olympic distance ever since.
Bike was always going to be my strong point. I had some clip on aerobars on my road bike, I knew nothing about bike positioning at the time and would definitely have had some issues if I’d gone much further as my hip position was pretty tight, but I got through in good shape and passed a lot of the swimmers who’d overtaken me. Did give me my first insight into drafting though - I’d been warned by friends who were “proper” triathletes to avoid drafting, but there were a lot of riders out on the road and many were just shamelessly in packs.
Run was just survival mode. I’m not sure that I will ever get used to that wobbly leg feeling you get in T2 on shorter tri distances. I’d sort of practiced but where I was living at the time I had to carry the bike up a flight of stairs to a first floor apartment, so by the time I’d got my keys out, done that, changed shoes and come back down again I’m not sure how much help it was! The eye opener on the run was that although I felt terrible for most of it and was going quite a bit slower than I’d hoped, nearly everybody else was suffering as bad or worse so I was still passing more people than were passing me. That was a key lesson that’s served me well throughout other tris - good bike strength and pacing can leave you in better shape to run than people who are much better runners than you.
Overall I enjoyed it enormously. Sounds like you’ve done a lot of sensible prep (certainly more than me!). My main tip would be not to get too hung up on times. If you’re on track to meet or beat it then great, but if you miss it then it really isn’t a big deal. Lots of things can have a big factor in your time in an actual race, from rookie mistakes you might make (e.g. swimming a few hundred extra meters through poor sighting, slow transitions, bad pacing) to stuff outside your control (course elevation, winds and heat, inaccurate course length). The important thing in your early tris is to enjoy the experience and learn from it, goal times are something you can refine once you have a few races under your belt and a better feel for where you can improve.
