Triathlon Update: The Shaving Dilemna

So I've now got less than 5 days until the big race and I'm feeling pretty good. Our triathlon team had a practice triathlon last Saturday. It was half of the distance (750m swim, 12.5 mile bike, 3 mile run) we'll be doing next weekend (1 mile swim, 25mile bike, and 6 mile run). The swim, although I was still breathing pretty heavy when I got out of the water, went better than at the Camp Pendleton Sprint Tri the previous weekend. I came out of the water in 4th place. By the halfway point on the bike, I had moved into first place and extended my lead on the run. I ended up with a time of 1:08:40. This puts me squarely on track to meet my goal of a 2:25 in the actual race.

Again, I learned a few valuable lessons from this practice race. First, I learned not to put my wetsuit on the bike rack after the swim. Although I saw lots of people doing it at Camp Pendleton, its apparently against the USA triathlon rules. To teach us a lesson, our coach grabbed all the wetsuits belonging to us "low life bottom dwelling scum" who left our wetsuits on the rack. All he did was throw the wetsuits in a pile. However, all of our wetsuits looked exactly alike and I had neither labled my wetsuit nor ever bothered to look at the size. So after 40 minutes of trying on wetsuits, I ended up with a wetsuit that fits fairly well...although I'm still not convinced that it was the one I wearing earlier in the morning. (It just feels a bit looser in the arms.)

Secondly, I decided that I needed a GU flask for my bike. Once again, I lost my gels. This time they fell out from under my tri shorts. I also learned that if I were to lose a Gu pack in the race, it's a potentially disqualifying penalty if you don't go back and pick it up. I don't want that to happen in the race.

I started tapering last week on the bike and the run. We had our last ocean swim on Saturday morning. I ended up doing ~3 miles. Surprisingly my arms weren't hurting too bad at the end. I ended up making an appointment for a massage on Wednesday. I'm pretty excited. This is going to be my first massage in over a year and I've heard they're just great to loosen you up before the race.

So now I get to the big question: to shave or not to shave? Being the big race, I do want every advantage I can get. But how big a difference will shaving actually make? In high school, we always shaved for the big sectional swim meet at the end of the season. However, we're wearing wetsuits in the water and I have a hard time believing that it will make that big a difference on the bike and the run...at least at my level of competition. I was surprised with the number of guys on the team who I heard were going to be shaving. Its not even all of the most competitive guys on the team. But maybe shaving is just part of being a triathlete. So if I do consider myself a triathlete (and I do now), maybe I should just do it.