Well, it took about 40 yards before I started to panic. I couldn't see, I couldn't breathe and my stroke was terrible. Swimming through the channel was odd, as the water was only two feet deep, but then it dropped off and I couldn't find the bottom. I think I ended up walking/swimming on my back more than anything. I was just happy to get out of the water

Get a wetsuit, train with it so I don't freeze. Practice swimming in the open water before race day.

Transition was a giant mud pit by the time I got there. Used a water bottle to get some of the mud off my feet, socks on, shoes on, helmet on, carried my bike out to the pavement.

This is a tale of two bike rides. For the first half, I was plugging along at 18+ MPH, feeling good. I made the turn to start heading back, got smacked with a headwind and all of a sudden felt very nauseated. This slowed me down to around 12MPH. I was on pace for a 40 minute time, ended up around 53 minutes. Garmin had the course 0.82 miles long

Not sure what caused the nausea, but if that stayed away I would have been fine.

Already had my running shoes on, so this was a quicker transition. I think 1 minute of this was navigating around mud pits

Finally, something I know I'm good at. I felt ok after the first little climb. My Garmin has the course short, 2.95 miles.

None really. Grabbed some Gatorade and got my stuff out of transition to head home. All i wanted was to wash my mouth out, get rid of that awful lake water


Well, my swimming sucks, my open water swimming even more so, and my biking is pretty terrible. Cold, rainy and windy weather certainly didn't help, but no excuse