Still, I was near dead last in the whole field in the swim, so I have plenty of room for improvement there. If I bring my swim down to the rough average, which is about 6:30 less than I got, that alone would get me 30 places in the standings. My strategy here, since I knew I was going to be slow anyway, was to expend as little energy as possible and make it up on the bike and run, which are longer anyway.

Just need to get my freestyle down. I did this one at a medium backstroke... just flipping over freestyle will improve quite a bit. I have my TI books and DVD and plenty of time to work on it. At least I expended very little energy. Forgot my earplugs so I was a little disoriented coming out of the water and it affected T1.

Took a minute for the waterborne balance issue to correct itself. Could have been faster given that I didn't have a suit to change or wetsuit to remove. I blew 20 seconds giving the wife a kiss and the kids fives because they were standing right next to the timing mat. Time well spent IMO.

Just be a bit quicker. Remembering my earplugs would probably cut down on the disorientation. Forgot to drink any liquids and paid for it a little bit on the bike. Not much, just discomfort, don't think it affected performance.

At mile 2, just at the bottom of the biggest hill in the course, I try to make an aggressive shift so I can pass someone on the climb. I learned not to do that while shifting the big ring to the small - rather than shift I dropped my chain. I was able to get it back on quickly but I forgot to move the derailers down to the lowest gear, so when I put the chain back on, it was out of sync with the derailers a bit. I was afraid to go to the small ring after that so I spent the rest of the race on the big ring. Made the climbs harder but faster and I think my time benefitted from it in the end.

I passed a lot of people. I learned that a good way to pass a lot of people on the bike is to be last in the swim. :)

Be a bit more careful on aggressive shifts while climbing. That probably only cost me 45 seconds but it made me have to shift differently the whole race.

Not a lot to do here - biked in my running shoes. The dismount was right at the bottom of a steep hilly curve with a big curb right before the mat. Badly placed, a couple people wiped out hard. All I had to do was drop the helmet, put on my Pawsox hat, drink, and go. Again burned about 20 seconds giving the wife a kiss and the kids fives because they were there at the mat again.

Not a whole lot to do here, really, so not much to do differently.

Decent - probably had a bit more but this is my first race. The last couple hundred is an uphill with a tight 180 into the chute... I sprinted from the bottom of the hill and hit the chute like a running back. Had to put a couple moves on to get through the chute. No one seemed too put off by it though a couple people did call it the football finish.

Probably just empty the tank a little bit more. Other than that it was decent. Rank could have been better but that's basic cardio level more than anything else. I'll improve that.

Not a whole lot... try to hunt down something to drink and that's about it.


Cardio and swim technique. Legs were strong through the whole race - the limiting factor on the bike and run was cardio. That's improving as I keep training.


I finished at about 90 minutes... there were 40-50 people more after me, in a field of 190, and they had completely run out of drinks at the finish line before I even got there. That's not cool. No drinks on the course, no drinks at the finish line, only goody in the packet was a t shirt... altered run route on race day that didn't match the map in the packet (that was handed out an hour before race time)... pretty much zero frills. I don't think water at the finish line is a lot to ask for. Started late, maybe 20 minutes, and the swim waves were way too big for the short course. The women especially had a lot of problems.