The swim was pretty rough overall given that the wind was causing some pretty crazy waves in the "bay". I jumped in and tried to get a good position, but we all kept drifting, making it kind of hard. It was a typical start with everyone fighting for prime position for about 100 meters until everyone found their zone. I worked on sighting by counting strokes between looking. I started at 6 and slowly worked up to 20. Whenever I looked up and found that I was off course I went back to 6 strokes and restarted my count. This worked very well, as I was never far off course.

I exited the water feeling very refreshed

Nothing.

T1 was pretty straightforward

Nothing

Bike went fairly well. I met my goal of spending most of my time in zone 2. I drank 3-4 ounces of perform every 3 miles and ate 1/4 of a bar every 6 miles. I ended up eating 1 powerbar and 1 bonk breaker bar total. I think i drank between 45-55 ounces, but I never reconciled the difference afterwards.

I felt great on the bike and spent most of my time passing people. I rode my SRAM s60s and had a disc cover on the back. I had zero handling issues, despite the dozens of people laughing at the choice of a disc. I was shocked to see my split on the bike, as my previous best was 2:40ish

nothing

Another good transition. I rode barefoot so I had to put socks on in T2

nothing

Felt good coming off of the bike. I never had any stomach issues nor any real limiting factors. I carried salt-sticks with me and took a few, but left my pouch opened and lost the rest. I was hoping to live of the course but was very disappointed that the only regular gu they had was strawberry banana.I took two of them and quickly switched to perform. I walked through the aid stations, splashed water on my head and took a few ounces of perform. I knew I was doing great on my pace and realized I could break 5 hours if I could run the last two miles in under 16 minutes. I pushed the last two miles sub-8 minutes and had zero issues finished strong.

This was my only race to run the entire time, giving a PR of ~20 minutes

bring my own GUs and don't lose my salt-sticks

quickly found Julee and the kids and gave them the typical sweaty-post race hug. I couldn't eat until I drank a beer. After this everything calmed down and I enjoyed some pizza (and another beer!).


Honestly, I never imagined I would break 5 hours...ever.


Great race and great conditions