Again, the second leg of the swim was right into the sun. I even had my polarized tinted goggles on. I sighted off of other people and didn't see the buoys until I was almost on top of them. I can't tell you if I swam a good line or not. If this race happens again next year, we should go the other way.

My problem with swimming is that I don't do enough of it.

Decent transition, raced w/out a shirt this time and put on my bike shoes with no socks as usual. Not wrestling a shirt on was time saver. Helmet and sunglasses went out without a hitch. Had a container with water to step in since the lake had a sandy beach... worked pretty good.

I should probably look into some tri shoes or work on having my shoes clipped on the bike already. That's the next technique IMO to streamline my T1 time. Otherwise I could hustle a bit more to the bike and to the mount/dismount line I suppose.

Good bike ride, but it takes me a bit to recover from the swim. My rear wheel is out of true and was rubbing on my brakes... pulled the wheel release lever to open the caliper.

I feel pretty good about my biking, got new wheels in the mail. Still room for improvement.

Couldn't get my left bike shoe off, had the top strap still Velcro'd.
Went sockless, but still tying up laces. I need to either get some Zoots or elastic laces to fix this issue. Stuck my cheapie wrist watch on my number belt so I wouldn't forget it this time. Not knowing the run course I'm not sure what a stop watch tells me... but whatever.

If my bike shoes had come off easier and I had slip on shoes, this could have been my first sub minute transition.

My first triathlon 5K leg where I didn't feel like I was going to vomit. I can attribute that to not popping a gel on the bike leg. Small cup of water at the turn around, otherwise that little sip was the only thing I took in the entire race. Ran with the guys around me and passed them at the turn around. My 8 mile training runs are paying off.

Maybe I'll get one of those Garmin watches so I can keep better track of my running. Could have run faster, but overall happy with my run.

Congratulated the guys coming in behind me, drank some water, walked around, talked with some people, found my wife and daughter.


Mostly my sub-par swimming. Bike and run could be faster, little things in transition could get me a few seconds, but my swimming is a huge gaping whole in the three major disciplines. This is only my third triathlon, overall I'm pretty happy with my progression.


Hats off to the RD who put this together. Would do it again for sure.