Kansas City Triathlon

Well, I did my first long distance triathlon of the season this weekend, the Kansas City Triathlon. It was an Olympic Distance race, 1500m swim/ 24mi bike/6.2 mile run. This race was supposed to be my gauge on how well I'm going to do at IM 70.3 Kansas in a couple of weeks. The overall results were encouraging since I'm still on track for 6 hour finish, which is where I want to be. I was disappointed with my swim time for this race, 49 minutes, though. Goals for this race was a sub 3 hour race with splits of 35-40 min swim, 1hr 20min bike, and 55 minutes run. My actual time was 3:04 overall, 49 minute swim, 1hr 16min bike, and 53min run. So if anyone knows of good swim coach in the Kansas City area, let me know, since I really need someone to help me with my technique.


This is what a mass start of the open water swim portion looks like. When you take off it's all kicking feet and flying elbows until the swimmers separate out.

Here's me struggling to get out of my wetsuit as I completed the swim portion. I'm just glad to be out of the water at this point. The athlete in front me only swam half as far as I did in the sprint distance race, so he decided not to wear a wetsuit.

Shantel took this picture of my best side on the first lap of the run

Here is the sprint to the finish. Shantel really likes the Army jersey since it makes me stand out more from the rest of the athletes.

Next up is the Ironman Kansas 70.3 on June 14th. As of right now I've met two of the goals I set for myself, I'm down to about 183lbs and thanks to every one's generosity I've raised $1000 to help disabled veterans with prosthetics and training so they can compete in athletic events. Now only race day will tell if I can complete the race and finish in under 7hrs 33min. I think I'm on track to met those goals as well.

One final note to the athlete who "accidentally" picked up my wetsuit that was draped over my backpack, it was only pee'd in once and the velcro closure at the back has a tendency to rub your neck raw so make sure you put some body glide on before you use it. Honestly, the guy who I borrowed the wetsuit from was glad that it "disappeared" so he could get a new one that doesn't rub his neck raw. Enjoy!

James Scrogin
bib number: 896
age: 35
gender: M
overall place: 239 out of 302
division place: 41 out of 47
gender place: 192 out of 229
time: 3:04:32
swim: 49:08
tran1: 3:48
bike: 1:16:46
tran2: 1:42
run2: 53:08