Timberman - Half Iron - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I was very disappointed with my swim performance. I never felt good at any point in the swim. My shoulders were sore almost immediately and I was never able to get my breathing into a good rhythm. I knew it was going to be slow, but I wasn't expecting anything quite as bad as 34:18.

There was nothing that I could do at this point, but I have a lot to work on until next summer. This poor performance came at a good time to really push me to do something about my (lack of) swimming ability.

This was my cleanest mount this season, which made me happy. It was also pretty cool to have help taking off my wetsuit going into transition.

Nothing.

I wanted to go sub-2:30:00 on this leg, and am glad to say that I had a pretty good ride. By starting in such a late wave, there was a constant stream of cyclists that I had to pass. This was good and bad as I always had something to try to catch, but I also had to do a lot of maneuvering through both bicycle and vehicular traffic for the entire race.

Around mile 53 I hit a nasty pothole while trying to avoid slow cyclists and passing cars. I heard a very loud crack and looked down, glad to see my computer hitting the ground behind me. I was terrified it wasn't something that would end my race, such as my fork or a wheel.

Maybe take it slightly easier to conserve some strength for the run.

I had the cleanest dismount of the season today, as well. I did a good job of getting off my bike and getting through the transition.

Nothing.

For how I felt, I was happy with the way I pushed myself through the later miles of the race. My first few miles were at a good pace, but the middle half of the race was particularly slow.

For what I had in me, I did well. This is not at all the runner I want to be, however. I know I can be much faster than this because I have been there before. This gives me a good focus for the off-season.

My legs were pretty toasted by the end of this race, so I didn't want to do any additional running, but did stretch for about 15 minutes almost as soon as I could.


Simply my (lack of) swimming and running ability. I have a lot of work to so in both disciplines over the coming months.

Overall, considering the fact that I felt terrible in the water and that I have poor running fitness going into the race, I pushed as hard as I could and still managed to PR thanks to a strong bike leg.


This was my first experience with a race of this scale and I was not disappointed. There are not enough good things I can say about this race in terms of its organization and preparation. Awesome race.