Tawas Triathlon Festival - Half Iron Man - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

The swim was interesting with many people opting to walk the first half in the shallow water. I had to walk some due to those walking around and in front of me as well as the shallow water.

Start in the very front and on the left in order to get out and be able to swim the entire course.

Long run from lake across roads into parking lot transition area. It was cold and my heels began to hurt by the time I arrived in t1.

not much, I was just taking it pretty easy.

This course was difficult with the limited miles that I had put in for training. I also struggle to find hills to train on in Mid Michigan so the hills seemed much tougher for me than most. I also did not enjoy being passed by and observing pelotons of as many as 8-9 people at a time. If they are not going to enforce drafting rules then don't have them in place, period!

Since I refuse to cheat on the bike I wouldn't change much other than train more.

OK, so here is where my race went BAD. I always come into t2 kind of "hot" and have never had any problems with the flying dismount. This was different! I started to bring my right foot over the top tube and hit my rear brake and things just went bad, fast. I believe that my rear tire hit some grit, or even a pebble, and the next thing you know the rear of the bike is flying out from under me and I am going down hard at about 18 mph! I was able to pop right up, was checked over by volunteers and race official (which cost me about 3 minutes on the bike) and limped into transition. I have some nice road rash on my knee, both elbows, shoulder and hand, and a pretty nasty bruise on my hip which really began to hurt on the run.

Think about what I'm doing, slow down, and dismount slowly and carefully- lesson learned!

The run started bad as a result of my crash coming into t2. I felt quite good from a cardio standpoint but my left hip really started to affect my gait during the second half of the run which led to some cramps in places that I'd never had them.

Not crash coming into t2

grabbed some watermelon, met up with Rottieguy and twohearted, and headed back to transition to check on the damage to my bike.


lack of training and aforementioned t2 incident


This was a nice race, and I feel that 3D did a nice job in putting it on. I do wish that there were course marshalls enforcing drafting rules as there was not one penalty given, and according to others on the course, the 3D truck followed behind one obvious peleton for quite a ways.