The day after my brother Julian competed in his 1st Sprint triathlon here in Copenhagen, it was time for me and for my triathlon friends to compete in today’s event. We were much better off with the weather, as it had dried up and there was no rain the entire day. To me this was really nice, as you can keep all your stuff dry.

Again this is a short Sprint triathlon weighing in at only 400 m swim, 18 km bike and 4 km run. This Sprint triathlon has been named 4–18–4 due to its distance. But it’s a great event, as it is held the day before the Copenhagen Challenge, which is the full Ironman distance where all the pros compete. This means that the facilities, timing and overall management is top notch. There are also a number of spectators out here which is kind of cool.

My friend Anders and I always compete in different sports. Most recently it has been badminton, karate and CrossFit. Now we also compete against each other in triathlons. It’s great fun and we seem to beat each other at various sports. On this day we were also joined by Trolle, Mads and Troy which are some of the other guys we compete with in triathlons.

I believe there was about 800 contestants this day, and we were among the first 50 to start. In this Sprint triathlon they start 50 people at a time with 60 seconds interval. It was really cool to be amongst the first, but if you’re not a strong swimmer, you will experience being run over in the water. It was chaos but it was still good fun!

I created a short video below to show how we all did that day:

June 5th the gang and I went a little north Copenhagen to compete in the sprint triathlon called “Tri på Tyren” which would be translated to “Bull Triathlon”. The name comes from the bike route which is filled with slopes. You are either climbing or going downhill. We had a GREAT day as it was sunny and zero clouds. It was a full days event, as a few of the guys were competing in the Danish Championship in sprint triathlon. The course today was 750m swim in a lake, 24km bike ride on the very sloped course and 5km run.

Trolle and myself were just competing in the standard triathlon (same course) but I really think he should had competed in the Danish Championship as he’s really fast. We were up in the morning and started around 9:30 am where Troy and Mads were starting later around 1 pm. It was a really good sprint triathlon and my first where I was wearing a wetsuit. It all went pretty well but I sure need to work on my transitions as I’m much too slow compared to the others.

The swim part of the sprint triathlon went well and I came in and managed to get out of the wetsuit okay. I won’t bother with socks next time as it just took way too much of my time to change. The bike ride was great all though my computer wasn’t aligned to the wheel so I didn’t know how fast I was biking. The run was really tough as it was hot and I had some pretty heavy legs. Normally I run under 23 minutes for 5km but I was a little worn out here.

Have a look at the video which we all helped film at the triathlon:

Troy & Nick In Their Wetsuits

Yesterday Troy and myself were out swimming in the ocean in our new wetsuits. It was just an easy 800m stretch to get the feel of our new suits. Also the water was pretty cold for the feet and hands

Today we took another trip to Amager Strandpark where we did a 1100m stretch. It was (obviously) much easier swimming in the lagoon compared to open sea and we didn’t get anywhere near as “sea sick”.

I must admit, it does make swimming that much easier in a wetsuit. The added buoyancy from a wetsuit is tremendous. The only real force you need to apply is forward since you don’t have to struggle to keep yourself afloat.

We’ve got our first sprint triathlon of the year coming up in a few days (750m open water swim, 24km hilly bike ride and 5km run), and that wil also be the real test of swimming in wetsuits. I have to say it takes a real effort getting properly into one of these suits, and we will soon see what kind of stress levels we reach trying to get out of them asap and onto the bike!