Prior to race start I was checking out the swim course and though, that looks reasonable, maybe a little short, I like short. unbeknownst to me it was a 2 loop course with a beach run, dang, so much for short looking course. Just tried to swim reasonable, swim volume this summer has been historically low, not lower than before I started swimming but close, 500 here, 500 there, and a 2k open water swim a few weeks before the race, that went well so I figured this would too.

First loop there was some minor crowding around the first turn bouy and then another guy and me occasionally bumped into each other along the back stretch but both tried to play nice. Swam first loop in 13 minutes, took 1.5 minutes to wade out of the water, jog along the beach, wade back in the water and start swimming again. Second loop was feeling some shoulder fatigue but focused on body position and the pull, second loop was also 13 minutes swimming. Add 1 minute to wade out of the water and jog up to transition and we are at 28:30.

This was about as perfect a swim as I could hope for given my preparation. Swim volume between KC Tri in May and this race was 10k meters. I did spend a lot of time at the pool but I was in charge of a 4 year old for almost all of it, lotta playing, little swimming.

Went through transition in slow motion and had lots of issues removing my wetsuit. I forgot my wetsuit lube at home but put some chamois lube on my feet and ankles, might have helped a bit but both legs required some finger prying to get over my feet. Plus I wasn't feeling like moving fast having just done 15% of my total summer swim volume in one swim.

move with a little more purpose

Took a little while to settle in on the bike, about 4 miles in while replacing the aero straw in its aero position, in my BTA water bottle I accidentally pushed the bottle over into the lap button of my Garmin, sending the watch into T2 while I still had ~20 miles to ride. No real way to recover the Garmin from that error so I ended the activity, switched to bike mode, & restarted. Thus not real sure on the bike course distance, it was a mile or two short. Finally started feeling pretty normal during the long climb back to the cross from Stull.

Ride more, after DK my riding generally consisted of an easy spin or two mid-week and a good hilly ride on the weekend. That worked with my schedule this summer so that is what it is.

T2 seemed pretty good, navigated around the muddy spots in transition and got my shoes and socks on pretty quickly. Didn't let fumbling around with the Garmin interfere with transition, got my bike activity stopped and started switching over to run after my shoes were on and I was moving.

nothing

still had my Garmin issues going on, got run activity started a little bit into the run course. Goal was to keep mile splits under or near 7:00. Summer running activity was similar to biking except I discovered jogging this summer so mid-week workouts were 2-4 miles of jogging with an 8 mile social run on the weekend. This managed to keep the weight off pretty well and the long run is extremely powerful training so things didn't degrade as badly as they could have. I started in 2nd place on the run and got passed right at the sprint turn around where we both questioned whether that was our turn or not, the pre-race maps showed us turning at the same place as the sprint but it was clearly marked as sprint turnaround only so we kept going, the HIM turn around was also marked OLY so we guessed right. So that guy left me kn the dust and I kept knocking out miles at about 6:50. Half way through the second lap it occurred to me that the 2 guys who were now ahead of me might have been in the first wave so keeping up the effort might yield something better than 3rd. Pickup up the pace pretty well and finished strong.

Again a pretty well executed run for my current fitness, and surprising fitness for my recent training, I'm always amazed at the training effect of relatively long runs at low intensity, the power of LSD.

chatted with some other finishers, ate a little, hung out near transition until Pete and Ken came through, then went back to my camp sight, cleaned up and changed, grabbed a beer and headed out along the run course to cheer on the HIM racers.


Lack of training but staying active all summer maintained a surprising amount of fitness.


Well run race, the long run and the short bike were somewhat offsetting but I think the overall race was a touch short. Looking at the numbers, first to third place was about 30s, me and first were virtually identical except I took 30s longer in T1 and my strong finish beat out #3 by 0.53s. Would have been different if we were racing heads up instead of 2 different heats, motivations would have changed, everybody probably would have dug a little deeper.