Swim was pretty good overall. My time was the 2nd best I've ever done in a race at this distance. It would have been better if I had sighted better at the start of the race. But by about 100 meters I looked up and realized I was fairly far off course and had to correct to get back in line with the buoys. I find that I'm getting more comfortable about being around other swimmers in the open water. I was practically run over by a fast female swimmer and had a couple run-ins with guys in my swim wave. But I didn't panic or stress and handled it all pretty well. In fact, the last guy I was bumping into I decided to try to surge ahead and get in front of him to stay and I did just that!

I should have sighted better early on. I was paying a little more attention to making sure that I didn't start out too fast and i started to veer off course. I was able to get back in line with the buoys and did much better after that. But I probably could have saved myself a little time with better sighting in the beginning.

T1 was OK. I wasn't racing into transition, but I was jogging at a decent pace. I started to put my bike gloves on, but after just a few seconds decided to ditch them. Everything else went fairly well without any real issues. The web site doesn't have rankings, but looking at the T1 times of the people around me my time looks maybe slightly slower than average.

I should have made the decision to ride without gloves before the race, but that only cost me a few seconds. At most, I could have gained one position in the overall standings and no more. I was also a little nonchalant about T1 and I could have put a little more effort into trying to get out of T1 quicker.

I was hoping for a serious increase in speed due to how flat the course was. But the cross-winds coming off the bay were tough. At times, I had to shift down a couple gears on a flat section because the wind was just killing me! I still had an excellent average pace and felt pretty good about my bike performance.

There wasn't much to do differently. I might have been able to do better if I could have stayed in an aero position longer, but I don't ride a lot in aero during training so I can't do it in races. That would have helped some, but I don't think there was a ton to be gained.

Not much to say here. T2 was decent. I pulled off the flying dismount and cruised into the TA. Bike equipment off and run stuff on with no real issues. The only hiccup was that I put my race belt on backwards and had to switch it as I was running out of T2. Rather than waiting for my calves to cramp on the run, I decided to stretch in the TA. This made my T2 time look longer, but it also made my run time look great! I'll take that trade off any day!

Other than trying to run a little faster through T2, nothing. Like I said, I'd rather stretch in T2 and have a better (and more accurate) run time. I hate having to stop mid-run to stretch, so I was OK with the trade off.

Well, it's hard to argue with a brand new PR on the triathlon run portion. In fact, my time was only 16 seconds off my 5K PR for even just a stand-alone 5K. I was thrilled with my run time. I was also extremely pleased to see that my fastest mile was the last one!

I don't know how to improve upon that run. I pretty much came to a stop at each of the water stations. Once to drink a cup of Gatorade and once to dump a cup of water on my head to cool down a bit. I find it almost impossible to drink while running, so I have to stop to get the drink down. I don't think I could have skipped that first aid station, but I possibly could have skipped the second and shaved a few seconds. But overall I'm thrilled with that time!

No real warm-down. I grabbed my finisher medal and started looking for something to drink. I grabbed an OJ from one of the vendors there and headed for the team tent.


Not much on my part. I had my 2nd fastest swim ever, my 1st or 2nd fastest bike pace, and set a new PR on the run. The only thing that was a problem on the day was my poor sighting to start the swim and the wind. To be honest, the wind was the biggest factor and I can't do anything about that.


The course was in a beautiful location and I have to admit to taking a little time during the race to check out the scenery. It was a great location for a race. The only negative thing I can say about the race was that the bike course got narrow on at least a couple corners. With over 300 competitors on a 6 mile course, which you have to traverse twice, it got crowded. Because of that, there were times were things got a little hairy on the corners when I came upon a slower rider. Whereas I wanted to carry about as much speed as I could into the corners, other more tentative riders would slow going into the corner which caused me to have to slow down to avoid an accident. It would have been nice if the corners were wider to allow enough room to safely get around slower riders. Otherwise, the race was awesome! It was well run with plenty of volunteers. The race had separate lanes marked off on the roads so you didn't have to share space with cars. Definitely a race I'll do again.