Swim went well. I had a pretty substantial lead on everyone else out there and knew I needed to go somewhat hard to give myself as much cushion on the bike as possible. The cold water had me breathing a lot more, but it was also my first open water swim this season so far. Overall it went well I think.

Get a practice or two in open water, but our temperature up north here is still in the upper 50's or so. I can deal with not doing it :P

Did better with this transition than the last race. I didn't try putting my helmet on while getting my suit off around my ankles. Need to practice that some more, but otherwise everything went well. I was able to get into my shoes better once I hopped on the bike as well.

Put my helmet on while using legs to get suit off. I was wobbly from the cold water though.

Well I think that my training is starting to show a little bit. This was one of my fastest bike splits on a bike portion of a triathlon. I think the wind/rain slowed things down naturally for everyone out there, but it would have been nice if it would have held off until the run at least! I was way ahead of everyone coming out of the swim, so I really wanted to get going on the bike. At one point after making a 90 turn onto the road we do most of the biking on I looked back and didn't see anyone coming. That felt great. At around 3.5 miles into it I decided to look back, and damnit, there was a guy not far behind me. He was hauling ass, so I just stayed in my rhythm and he went on by eventually. He was cooking pretty good. I thought that maybe on the way back we would have a bit of a tail wind, but it never really helped much. Mainly crosswinds out of the north with rain in your face the majority of the time.

Not much. I shouldn't have taken the week off leading up to this for my knee, since it didn't get any better, but oh well. You can't fault a guy for resting an injury!

My feet, and especially my right foot felt numb. It wasn't overly cold out, but it was enough that it made it tougher to get my shoes on while standing. I took an extra second of two to make sure my bike tire was in the rack alright( I didn't want it falling over, since they have wooden pallets for the racks instead of the normal hanging bars). I really was surprised it was only 34 seconds in transition with my shoe issues, but otherwise I am happy with it.

Hope my feet aren't numb coming off the bike. I did a lot better with waiting to get my feet out of my bike shoes in relation to being closer to the dismount line. I think that with practice you can really save a lot of time by continuing to hammer coming into that area up until you are closer.

The run was the one thing I was worried about. I love to run and am usually pretty fast, but dealing with IT band issues the last 2 months I have barely been running. At about a mile into the run portion I could tell I wasn't going to catch the overall, so I just kept at it, but around 1.5 miles or so my IT knee area started to get stiff. By the end of the race I was glad to be done. It wasn't in any real hurtful pain, but I was glad to be done. The first place guy only ran a few seconds faster than me, so we were pretty even in that regards. I could have pushed the run a little harder though, but overall I was happy with placing 2nd.

Not be injured. :P

Did some stretching. Brought my stick roller and rolled my it and legs a decent amount at my car as I was putting all my stuff away. Drank/ate some water/food.


My IT band obviously was the culprit. It has really dampened down my run training, which is somewhat of a blessing in disguise for my cycling training though.


Overall, Cutting Edge does a good job with their triathlons. This was the third one I have done that they direct, and overall they do a great job. They have a somewhat laid back approach, but usually draw in plenty of great triathlete minded people, who are good natured among other things. This is a nice course for beginners, or seasons triathletes looking to get their season kicked off. Would have been nice to see more people there participating, but I think triathlon in general is starting to drop around this area as far as participation goes it seems.