1. Do not do a race in a wetsuit if you have never worn one before. See previous blog about Cobourg. It is an entirely different experience swimming in a wet suit.
2. Do not take eyes off the road even if a hot shirtless man is mowing his lawn. Did this at the Musselman Half Ironman in 2010 and slid off the road into sand and crashed my new bike going about 33 km/h resulting in torn shorts, split forehead above left eye and loss of about 5 lbs of skin from road rash. Every step of the run was agony and a painful reminder to keep eyes on road!!
3. Do not try out new products the day of a race even when they say "designed for women by women" - especially an ironman. Decided to try out some new "YooHoo" cream on the day of Ironman Canada 2011. For someone who has such sensitive skin that I burn if I stand too close to a 50 watt lightbult and cannot use Crest toothpaste because it burns the skin on my face, I am not sure why I thought it was a good idea to try MINT YooHoo cream instead of my usual butt butter on race day. That is a burning sensation only rivaled by a bladder infection. The first hour of the race was interesting. There is no truth in advertising.
4. Do not chew Sharkies when outside running if temperature drops below -10 degrees. They freeze and lock onto your teeth like cement glue. Then you have to wait until you run home and thaw out before you can open your mouth.
5. Run in your socks even if they are wet. At the Muskoka 70.3 in 2008, it poured torrential rain the entire day. When I got off the bike in transition, I had dry socks tucked into my running shoes and covered with a garbage bag. Apparently I missed the herd of elephants that ran over my gear in transition because my stuff was strewn all over the place and my socks were soaked. So I made the questionable decision to run without socks. I really did not notice anything chafing until I hit a water puddle at 18 kms and thought someone had set my ankles on fire. It had gone beyond chafing to gouges all around both ankles. The last 3 kms were painful and I ran right into the medical tent. It took forever for the wounds to heal. See pictures below. I still finished the race.
6. Finally my friend Susan's favourite. Wash all racing apparel before the race. I purchased a new tri suit for the run at Ironman Lake Placid 2009. I did not want to wash it - I wanted it pristine with all the good mojo still on it. Despite injuring my calf muscle about 3 weeks before Ironman, I had a fabulous time doing the Ironman and smiled all day. On the run I noticed that I was scratching a bit on the personal girl parts and assumed one of my gels had slid down inside my suit during the run - I had them tucked all over my suit including under my shoulder straps. I finished the race and when we went back to the hotel after it was over, I was changing out of my tri suit and looked down and realized it was not a gel - I still had the crotch protector on my tri suit. Sadly this was the suit that I tore falling off my bike at Musselman.
So there are are few hard learned lessons about what not to do training for a triathlon. I hope my experiences save a lot of people from a lot of embarrassment.
Lisa
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