Several big issues popped up from the swim. First, as I was wading into the water, I stepped on a large rock and gouged a significant hole in my foot... The organizers had tried to clear a path, but I still managed to get a pretty good gash. I guess it was good that the water was cold because my foot was pretty numb.

Second, it looks like the event organizers had trouble getting people in the right waves for timing. I started the stopwatch on my HRM when they set our wave off and I checked the time when I came out of the water and I set a lap time when I step on the pad. All these times were in the ballpark of what I was expecting time wise which was around 5 mins. The official time was 10:38 which was exactly 5:00 longer that what I recorded on my HRM. I was in the 3rd wave, and I believe they didn't get the wave time subtracted from my time. This also added 5 minutes to my overall time. I still have to contact the event organizers to see if I can straighten this out.

A warm up would have been nice, but overall I was satisfied with the swim.

The timing system didn't record the transition times. The transition from swim to bike and bike to run were just lumped into the bike time, so I calculated this time from my HRM.

From my HRM I estimate that my T1 time was about 2:15 plus another 40 seconds of running with the bike for a total of 2:55. This include about a 100 yard run from the beach to the transition area, the time changing gear, and the run with the bike until I could get on the bike.

The exit of the transition area didn't have a mount line, just some volunteers yelling it's ok to get on the bike.

All in all this was a stressful transition. Running barefoot from the beach to the transition area after I gouged my foot was quite uncomfortable and the confusion on when to get on the bike was a little stressful as well.

Better situational awareness would help.

The bike started bad. There were several events going on at the same time including a separate 5k run, so the entire event arena at Moody gardens had orange cones all over it. When I came out of the transition area and to the first turn on one of the surface streets, there were orange cones on both sides of a divided road. I was following what I thought was the correct course and at the last second one of the volunteers waved me towards the left side of the road. (ie into the oncoming lanes) Well, I tried to make the turn, didn't quite get there and hit the curb and crashed into the median. The bike threw it's chain and I got a few scrapes on my shoulder. I got the chain back on the bike and got back on the course. Unfortunately, the crash turned the magnet on my front wheel for my speed sensor so it was giving me intermittent readings. After all this I actually got comfortable on the bike and had a decent ride.

How about not crashing? :) Seriously, driving the course would have helped tremendously, both with the crash and the turnaround.

Once again there was no measurement of the actual transition. So I estimated the transition time from the dismount of the bike to the start of the run course using my HRM.

It was starting to get hot and I was just pacing myself to make sure that I finished. My foot was starting to really hurt. All in all the run was just unpleasant. Overall I wasn't too unhappy since I had limited time to really train on the run.

Clearly, dropping more weight and getting more run training in is the area where I have the most room for improvement. There are a least a couple of minutes to be had here.

Not much to speak of... Mostly cleaning dirt out of my scrapes and getting my shoe off a throbbing foot.


Haven't I whined enough in this report? :) Seriously, a better organized event would help, but the biggest thing would be dropping more weight to make the run faster.


I appreciate all the efforts of the volunteers and the organization putting the event on and I can understand how difficult it can be with 600 relatively new people to the sport, however, clear course markings are a must and the maps that were distributed didn't match the final run course.

I still need to straighten out the timing with the event organizers. The final results showed me in 8th, however, I would have been 3rd without the extra 5 minutes from the swim.

Unfortunately, this felt more like an obstacle course than an endurance event. But I survived and will be back for more.