Swim felt pretty good, especially once I got into the groove of the short laps

New socks were not easy to get onto my wet feet, even with them rolled half-way. Once I got going, the new socks felt great so it was worth the hassle. I forgot to reset my bike computer before the event, so I had to pause for a moment at the mount line to reset it.

Roll the socks better, reset my cycle computer.

Riding my hybrid bike my average speed on flats is in the 15-18 mph range. I was targeting 1 hour for the bike and knew that the rolling hills would challenge that. On the flats and downhills I pushed myself a little harder than I usually do and took each hill in stride. As I neared the finish of the bike I looked at my watch and saw I had only a few minutes to make my target time. The last half-mile was mostly flat / slight downhill so I kicked it in gear and pushed to the finish and hit my target.

Took me a moment to find my rack, the last push at the end of the bike had my adrenaline spiked.

Make a better mental note of what rack number I was on.

I've been practicing this run for the last few months so I knew what to expect. My legs got into "run mode" fairly well thanks to weekly brick workouts. As I ran up the big hill each time I saw a motivational message chalked into the sidewalk that said "think I can" I would say to myself "KNOW I can". Once over the top I knew it was all down hill from there and cruised down to the finish line with a smile on my face.

Not much, the run went really well and my pace was faster than my training runs.

Cold water in and on my head, stretched legs, then went and got my favorite post-race beer: Racer 5 IPA.


Physically I felt pretty good. Improving my fit in all three categories will help . The big improvement will be upgrading from my hybrid bike to a road/tri bike.


This is the longest sprint of my season this year with it's 15 mile bike route. The long staggered start time was odd to me but worked well with the number of participants. Fortunately most of my run training is during my lunch break so my late start time didn't impact my performance much as I'm used to running in the mid-day heat. For the most part the volunteers were great and the overall vibe of the event was laid back and enjoyable.