Memphis in May - TriathlonOlympic

swim went better than I thought or expected. Stayed fairly straight until the first buoy, then started catching and passing people. Having the rope at water level the whole way helped, so i wasn't looking up sighting every 10 strokes. I just hugged the rope the whole way. I was hoping to come in around 22:30. When I stood up at the ramp and say 21:30 I was shocked. I didn't kill myself on the swim and felt really good coming in, so to beat my goal by a minute without totally draining myself, I was pleased.

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no big issues here. Not being totally anaerobic coming out of the water helped. I had my suit unzipped and pulled down by the time I got to my spot. Got the suit off easily, went WITHOUT socks for the bike, which I liked.

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Pretty good ride. I was wanting to come in under 1:10 at worst, thinking 1:08 would have been great. I was thrilled being just under 1:07. I went comfortably hard, kept a steady effort. Never shot my quads, kept it near the line, but never went over.

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good T2. Put socks on for the run. That went smoothly. Everything went well in T2

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the run was HOT. It was upper 80s with 90% humidity by the time I started running. I was hoping to break 45 min for the run, starting out around 7:30 pace and picking it up. I started well, never could speed up. I was passing tons of people because I had started late, but then I was passing people in my age group. My goal by mile 2 was to break 48min, and just keeping an even pace. The markers at 3 and 4 were off and that threw me a bit, until I hit Mile 5 and could tell where I was pace-wise. I passed 3 people on the road that were vomiting or staggering around. 1 of them had flown past me on the bike, 1 had passed me on the run about mile 3. I made it back to the levee, which seems like it takes forever to get across, but I made it, with an very even 7:30 pace. I was a little pissed at the time, but apparently it was a tough run on everyone. I certainly didn't expect to be 12 in the AG. I did have a faster run split than a guy that has beaten me the last 5 years!

nothing. Considering the heat, I think I did about as well as I could have.

You couldn't cool down. I poured several cups of water over me, walked around for a few minutes, then sat at my Transtition area for 5 minutes or so. Ate a little nit, drank a coke and packed up to drive back to Nashvegas


the HEAT


Year after year, an outstanding race, especially for being so big. The only negative was the traffic getting to the site. This was my 6th year doing this race and they changed things up this year with parking and routing you to the race area. It sucked. It took right at 30 minutes to park after I got to the Naval base. In the past it took MAYBE 10. One of the cool things they did this year was to have the Pro racers start after the age groupers. I had actually finished by the time the Pros started at 10:30. I would have loved to watch them had I not had to get home, or it wouldn't have been 100 degrees outside.