Lone Star Triathlon Festival - Quarter - TriathlonOlympic

I started in the middle towards the back. I was confident my swim would be better than in the past but I had no idea what that would mean in race conditions.

It was my first salt water swim and my first deep water start. I think I prefer the deep water start, it's fun. It's a great place to get ready mentally before the gun. At the gun I aimed for about 10 feet to the right of the buoy and kept a good line. Didn't get hung up at the turns. I just tried to concentrate on good form, not going too hard so I wouldn't blow up on the bike (a big concern given my lack of bike training) and sighting every 4-6 strokes.

I absolutely noticed that the more I concentrated on a good stroke, my speed went up and my RPE went down.

My best swim yet by far. The work over the winter paid off. Between the TI drills and all the help from dexter and rstocks3 my swim has improved way beyond what I ever expected.

Thank you Dud and Bob. You guys have been incredibly generous with your time and advice and I had a big payoff at this race because of it.

Maybe start a bit further up. I was held back quite a bit by the pack in front of me.

Not a bad time and 14th in my AG. More of a jog than a run to my bike from the water.

A neighbor in the TA gave me some powder for my bike shoes. That's a new 'must-have' for the bag. Much easier to put them on.

Run instead of jog out of the water.

My expectations for this were really low. I haven't been training on the bike and had no confidence about what I could do. This was also the first time I traveled to a race and reassembled the bike myself. Turns out I didn't pay enough attention and my handlebars were off center about 15 degrees. This made staying in the aero bars pretty uncomfortable for more than 10 minutes at a time.

The headwind on the out portion was pretty strong. A steady 16mph or so I would guess. My HR was in the low 160's to start and I wanted to keep it lower than that. I backed off and got it down to the low 150's and pretty much kept it there for the rest of the ride.

At the turnaround, me and a few other guys all yelled 'YEAH' when we got the tailwind. It was that dramatic a change.

This was a lot of fun. I love cycling.

It was really odd to ride for so long with absolutely no elevation change.

There were lots of flats on this course, particularly on one 3 mile stretch of the inbound part. One of the bike support guys I spoke with afterwards said a lot of the flats were caused by industrial staples and he suspected someone had sabotaged the course.

Pay more attention to my bike set up.

In and out. I got my feet out of the shoes on the bike so it was pretty easy. I put sock on here but had them rolled up so they went on quick.

This was fun. The aid stations were great, coming in to the BT aid station was just incredible. I stopped for maybe 20 seconds to visit. I hope the picture Laurie took of me and Ron came out.

I wasn't crazy about all the concrete on some parts of the course. It's painful for me to run on, I feel it in my back pretty intensely. The course was kind of convoluted with a lot of switchbacks which allows you to see alot of people coming the other way. This was great, because I got to see a lot of BTer's.

I didn't push this like I could have. I did turn it up a bit the last mile, but I was just having a good time. I didn't even realize how much until I came into the finish and the race announcer "described me as "coming in with a huge smile on his face..."

Went to the booth in the expo.


Races just don't get better run than this.