Looking over his “post mortem notes” after the Reston Sprint Triathlon Sunday, Doug Landau noted several key mistakes that cost him 3-5 minutes.

1. Prepare as much as possible the night before. (Landau had not secured his Nimble race wheels to his bike ahead of time, and the loose screws resulted in rubbing against the frame, wearing out the tires and using extra effort to get up the hills. The wheel rubbing also forced the experienced racer off the bike TWICE to make repairs.

2. Freeze an inch or two of liquid in the water bottle if it will be a hot day. HOWEVER, take your straw out first. Landau blew it again. He could not get any liquid Cytomax during 80% of the ride because his straw was frozen. Then, in pulling on it to shake the ice out, he broke the aero bottle straw. He also did not have a second bottle because it was such a short race ! There was plenty left in the bottle after the race.

3. Start you heart rate monitor, stop watch, cyclometer, time window swim chronograph and other electronics BEFORE you leave the wall to swim. Stopping in the pool will result in your getting passed, cussed at, out of synch and smacked. Starting these things a few seconds before the Race Officials yell “GO !” will now corrupt your data.

Despite these mistakes, Landau swam the 400 meters in 8:07, for 9th place in the 45-49 age category. The Herndon brain injury lawyer followed that less-than-stellar swim with the fastest transition time (0:55) of the group and a decent 5th place bike ride in 31:48 (despite 2 dismounts for mechanical problems). The next transition was a little slow, but good enough for 3rd at 1:05, which, followed by the 4th fastest run in the bracket (22:43 for a hilly 5km.) resulted in an overall time of 1:04:36 and another age group prize.