Bracebridge Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Despite what the pre-race report said about the current, there was really no noticeable current. Water was very warm and calm.
This is easily my best swim ever. Some contact at the beginning. Then I found a good pair of feet about 75m into swim and was able to draft off her for the remainder of the swim. I didn't even need to sight much, as she seemed to know where she's going. Every so often when I sighted, the buoy was right there. She went slighly off at the far green buoy but immediately corrected herself within 5 sec.
Swim time includes ~75m run into transition area. Actual swim time according to my watch 16:09, 2:09/100m, 1:58/100yds (I DO love that sub2# in yards!) Although that's turtle slow by many triathletes standard, that's my fastest OWS ever! And I'm very happy with my swim.

After the swim, there was a step about knee high to get out of the water onto the grass. I almost tripped. Then there was a little uphill run, ~75m into transition area. As I bend down to get my wetsuit off in the transition, I felt really dizzy and had to hold on to the rack to steady myself. With my low blood pressure, I remeber my dr say I'm not suppossed to move up and down (and horizontal? in swimming) so fast. I guess that's what caused the dizziness and the stumble out of the water. So I took a little time steadying myself and then fought with my wetsuit to get it off. Bodyglide did not prevent the wetsuit from sticking to my leg.

The course is rolling with a few steep climbs. I passed a ton of people. Of course, that's not difficult when I came out of the water so far behind. On the steep climbs, which I barely made it up, a few people passed me. Then I passed them back afterwards. I don't know what it is about the hills, perhaps I need a new bike / new gears, just still couldn't figure them out.
There was a scary moment on the steep downhill. There were a few people ahead of me, we're all riding on the right side, except to pass. Then there was this girl, not passing, but riding on the left! I kept calling "on the left",but she just ignored me and would not move over to the right. I obviously didn't want to go over the yellow line. I remeber John Salt saying crossing the yellow line results in immediately disqualification. And if a car is approaching, it can result in permanent disqualification. I ended up having to pass her on the right, all the while worrying if she would suddenly changed her mind and moved to the right and cut right in front of me. Then as I was passing, another girl in front was passing someone on the left. So immediately after I passed the first girl on the right, I had to go the left to pass the 2nd girl. All the passing on that steep downhill, that's scary for me. I slowed down quite a bit and lost a bit of time.
Bike time includes a run over VERY uneven / hilly grass section to mount / dismount line. Speed is 29.9kph according to my Garmin. Max speed 59.5kph.

I thought I was running faster. Then I looked at my HRM, 149, that's Z4 for me. So I stepped it up a bit, to 150's, and managed to negative split.

This AG is surprisingly fast. The first 3 people in my F50-54 beat the first place women in F45-49! And I thought I would rank higher when I moved up to another AG. Anyway, I'm ok with 4th AG, but I'm very happy with my swim, even though that's just 6th in my AG.

I downloaded the results and sorted them myself. Turned out of 136 women in total, I'm overall #50 (37%)/ swim #73 (54%)/ bike #28 (20%)/ run #52 (38%). Excuse me for tooting my own horn here, but I'm really pleased that 2yrs after the accident at the Worlds and over a yr of frozen shoulder, and at age 50 this yr, I can still be top 40% of all women, MOP in the swim, my weakest leg (which I still need a LOT of work on), and top 20% of all women on the bike. I thought I was a better runner, though. But overall, I'm elated, perhaps I CAN age gracefully.