2018 Sebago Lake Triathlon Race Recap

I was up in Maine for my nieces’ dance recital and decided to do Sebago Lake Tri the next morning before we headed home!

Sebago Lake Tri race review first, then my story at the end.

2018 Sebago Lake Tri Recap

The Sebago Lake Tri by TRI ME was held at St. Joseph’s college for the first time this year. It used to be at Point Sebago.

Location: Easy parking at the college, plus plenty of bathrooms indoors. Note that Standish is further from Portland than advertised on the race site; it takes about 40 minutes to get there from downtown Portland, not 20.

Race size: This is a small race. It’s great because event parking wasn’t an issue and I never waited in line for the bathroom, but there may be fewer people behind you than you’d like. 😉 Only 126 people finished the Individual Sprint Tri, and 65 finished the Individual Olympic Tri.

Swim Course: A bit rocky entering the water, and a long horizontal course. Water was average lake temperature for Maine in June, about 63 degrees. Wetsuits required. No bathrooms down by the swim course, and a decently long uphill path to get to the transition area.  They did have a place for shoes for athletes when they got out of the water to run up to transition. Lake is relatively calm in the morning for triathlons and no aquatic plant issues. I recommend tinted goggles because the sun will be in your eyes for the return to shore and it makes it hard to spot the buoys. The Olympic buoys were a different shape than the sprint buoys, but they were all the same color yellow. It likely was fine for them because they had to pass the sprint buoys and then go around the outer Olympic buoys. The finishing buoys were orange.

Bike Course: Hilly with some long, slow hills, and one incredibly bumpy road and a covered bridge with wooden planks that were parallel to bike tires and the gaps between boards were a potential hazard. Previewing the bike course is a good idea. My Garmin registered 709 feet of elevation gain for the 14 mile ride, with quite a bit in the end for a slightly anti-climactic finish. Course was closed in some areas but not others. Good number of flaggers.

Run Course: Trail running through the woods on campus; one red loop and one blue loop for sprint, two red loops and one blue for olympic. I was in the back and didn’t find the course too crowded, but the trail is occasionally narrow and you need to pay close attention to the arrows and flaggers to do the correct route. Finishes with some uphills that were more efficient to walk than run because they were so steep. Loops through campus in a way that makes it easy for spectators to see you multiple times on the run if they’re good at figuring out the map.

Post Race: BBQ and beer for athletes (tickets were in bib packets). Extra BBQ tickets for family could be purchased in advance, beer was a one-ticket thing and you couldn’t purchase beer for non-athletes. 2018 website still advertised a playground and mini-water park for after the event family fun, but that was at the Point Sebago location. There were no family activities at St. Joseph’s college. No veg options at BBQ so I gave my ticket away and ate a banana and some potato chips with my beer. Beer was cold and from Sebago Brewing, so it was pretty delicious. Bring your finisher pint glass and they’ll put the beer in that instead of plastic!

Giveway: Technical race shirt at bib packet pick-up, includes women’s sizes. Finishers receive a Sebago Lake Tri pint glass, and reusable water bottles sponsored by Mike Caiazzo of Portside Real Estate Group. Mike is most well known for being my brother-in-law, but he’s also a professional triathlete who led a preview of the Olympic Bike Course, and he was on site at Bib packet pick-up at Sebago Brewing and at the race. Good person to ask about nutrition on the ride or where to buy your next house in Maine.

Results & Photos: There will be a free race photo available online sometime after the race through Flashframe. Results were chip timed and broken down. You could sign up to get text messages with your race results, and they came through almost immediately after the race. Age category awards were given to the top three in every category broken down in five-year increments, and also for Athena and Clydesdale and top overall finishers.

My Race

It was a beautiful day for a tri!

I still had trouble and panicked in the water during the open water swim. It was frustrating because I’ve put in so many hours working on my swim stroke in the Equinox pool, even investing in a swim coach, but my reptilian brain freaks out in the water and won’t let me use it.

I have no regrets about learning to swim and the effort I’ve put in at the gym. That’s a life skill that is never wasted. Swimming for fitness is a beautiful low-impact workout that I will continue to love long after I do my last open water swim. (Which might have been yesterday, but never say never.)

But one truism that triathletes often repeat is that pool swimming does not prepare you for open water swimming. That’s accurate. Open water is very different from a pool where your lane is protected by lines of buoys keeping other swimmers from swimming over you, where there’s clear visibility and a blue line to follow on the bottom of the pool, and where you can stand up and rest any time.

I’d definitely put in more time out in the open water working on staying calm and sighting before I do another triathlon.

Despite a tough swim, I was not one of the people towed to shore on the back of the kayak. (And good for them for knowing they needed to stop.)

Which meant I got my reward; I could get on my bike. I’m so incredibly happy when I get to the bike portion of the Tri. The run portion is all right, but I’ll be honest, running feels better when you haven’t flailed around in the water and then biked for almost an hour first.

So, where to from here?

I might look for a cycling event sometime. I wonder how much I would enjoy training for a 50-mile ride somewhere. I know nothing about cycling events, and maybe it’s time to look for a beginner friendly ride that doesn’t involve crossing state lines and biking for days.

I’m also planning to run another half marathon in the fall. I’ve lined up babysitting for my training runs this summer, I’ve got a training plan. I’ll be turning 35 in September, and I ran my first half marathon the day before I turned 30. It seems appropriate that I run one the month I turn 35, too. I thought when I signed up to run that first half that it’d be a one-time accomplishment. What better way to celebrate the fact that it was just the beginning than to run another one at this next milestone birthday? And 35 is at least half a milestone, just like 13.1 is half a marathon.

And will I ever Tri again? Not without doing some open water swim clinics, first. But that won’t be in my near future. I’ve got biking and running to do, first!