Heavy surf, LOTS of continuous waves. 3-4' Wave swells where starting at buoys and continuing in sets all the way to shore, no less then 3-4 waves crashing at any given moment from buoy line to shore. The swim out was tough for all but the fittest swimmers.

Quite a few stingray incidents, myself included, so my foot was on fire for the entire event.

Not much else except more training time in rough ocean environment.

I have relatively new Zoot Ultra TT shoes and they are abit tight so I had put socks on wet feet, that slowed me down at least a minute and a half. I did not want to risk getting a bad blister during the race. Oh, I use 'rat trap' style pedals so I do not have 'clip in' shoes.

I did not ride with gloves and did not like how the salt water was making my handle bar grips slippery. But scrwing with gloves would have cost at least another minute or two.

No socks with the shoes, don't get new shoes only weeks prior to event. Other then that, T1 went very well.

Flat and fast

Felt as though I could have pushed harder in a few areas, but overall I had a fantastic ride.

Already had shoes on as I have 'rat trap' pedals, so no shoe change required.

ran up 3 bike racks before realizing going wrong way, so lost a few seconds.

Run started out slowly, felt mild side stitch coming on so just basically felt like I was jogging, picked up the pace towards the end.

Left Foot was still burning from earlier stingray attack wound.

Got a gel in me sooner, and dig a little deeper for a faster pace.

walked around post race venue as transition was still closed due to people still being on the bike course. Found a few buddies to hang out with and cruise around and check out vendors.


Started new job, continuous high temps in the desert of over 100*F and smoke from recent wild fires all accumulated to really restrict my training.


I felt this was a awesome race. Its challenging and can allow someone to really excel if they put forth a good effort. In other words the reward to effort ratio is excellent.

The swim is a challenging swim, do not take this one for granted. In these warm pacific waters you do not want to spend too much time with feet on the ocean floor as there are lots of stingrays. I got nailed as did at least 6 others that I personally seen getting treated.