I was expecting them to announce which wave was starting. All of a sudden, I looked up and all of the men were running into the water to start the swim! I was probably 20-30 yards away from the water. I had to run around the group of women waiting for their start and get into the water. I was literally the last man into the water. It was a little tough because I had numerous slower swimmers to navigate around. There were a lot of people in the water at once and I could feel myself getting tense every time I got close to someone. As much as I wanted to flip over and backstroke, I managed to keep myself going forward freestyle. My official time was 9:28, but my GPS watch recorded 8:45, so I was close to 45 seconds behind on the start!

I guess pay better attention to the announcer. I didn't look at the time, but it seemed the race started a few minutes early and I was totally unprepared. Given how sporadic my training had been, I'm not surprised by my time. It was only slightly slower than I expected.

T1 went fairly smoothly. I jogged out of the water and easily found my bike on the rack. The only problem I had was getting my bike gloves on. I spent a little more time getting them on than I would like.

Maybe practice getting my gloves on when my hands are wet? T1 went fairly well with that one exception. Otherwise, I thought I did pretty good.

The bike went better than expected. Again, my training had been sporadic, so I had lowered expectations for the bike. I was able to handle the hilly course pretty well and was happily surprised to end up with an average pace of 16.9 mph. I landed my flying dismount fairly smoothly and ran into transition. Based on my overall ranking, this was my best discipline.

Train more. In terms of the race, I don't know that I could have hoped for much better. I only felt like I made one small mistake. One guy was in front of me for quite a while and was going slightly slower than I wanted. Eventually, I got sick of him and really mashed on the pedals up a hill to get in front of him. It took me a little while to recover from that. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have made that pass up a hill.

T2 went OK. Most things were pretty smooth, but I had a little trouble getting my running shoes on. The course description said that part of the run was a trail run, so I wore my trail running shoes. In the end, very little was "trail" and most of it was on the road. I think I wouldn't have had as much trouble with my running shoes. Also, my calves almost cramped getting my shoes on, which didn't help.

Stuck with my regular running shoes. It was the only real negative from T2.

Run went pretty well. My legs were pretty beat up after the bike, so I tried to ease into the run. By 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile in, I was mostly over that feeling and could run more like I'm used to. The hills were tough, but I tried to put a little extra effort into them knowing there would be a downhill to match. I think I passed more people than the number that passed me, including passing a couple guys that originally passed me at about the 1 mile mark. I negative split each mile of the race. According to my Garmin, my miles went 9:39, 9:13, 8:31!

I could have taken it a little easier on the bike, but i don't think it would have saved me much time. I think my run still went fairly well. Maybe having my road running shoes would have been better than my trail running shoes? But again, it probably wouldn't have made a huge difference. I was pretty happy with my run.

I walked around the TA a little and drank some water, then I walked out into the lake and sat down in the water and dunked my head under! That water was refreshing!


My training. I really had been inconsistent with my training since my Olympic. Plus, I had a football game last Sunday and I played the ENTIRE game, not one play off. That really took a toll on my legs and they never had much of a chance to recover since I was trying to squeeze in some last minute training.


Overall, it was a pretty good race. It's one I would go back and do again next year. The course was hilly, but it was scenic. The water in the lake was very clear, a definite bonus compared to other places I've had to swim in Massachusetts. I'd say about the only real negative was the massive wave start for the swim. ALL men went off simultaneously, an announcement I must have missed. The web site said that there would be swim waves, but that didn't hold true. I was standing on the beach expecting to hear a wave announced when all of a sudden I saw all of the men start the swim in one massive wave! I was standing on the beach 20-30 yards from the water when I noticed every one else in a yellow cap running out into the water. It wasn't a huge deal other than the fact that I lost 30-45 seconds on the swim and the fact that I HATE massive group starts on the swim.