Comments: Although my overall time was almost 4 minutes slower than the same race last year (altogether due to the swim) my rank among all women was much improved: 53rd %ile as opposed to 45%ile last year. That means I was faster than more than half of all women, the vast majority of whom are 20 years younger than me. This makes me feel as if my hard work is paying off.
The weather forecast was for rain all day, with thunderstorms starting at 9:00 or 9:30. Before entering the water we were given emphatic instructions on how the kayakers would signal us to get out of the water, and how if we saw lightning on the bike we should "find shelter" and wait to be picked up. Given all of that, I was not optimistic about doing a complete race and started thinking of it as just practice. Amazingly, we had no thunderstorm and even the serious rain waited until everyone was done.
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