Clean start with no feet, elbows, or hands smacking me. The cold water hits you pretty hard all by itself and the exposed areas of my body (forehead, feet, and hands) were feeling the chill, but that feeling mostly fades into the background as I progressed through the swim. I immediately lost the first place guy in our wave and I stayed in second position for the remainder of the swim. The waves were well spaced out, so very little traffic to swim through, although there seemed to be quite the congregation of swimmers crowding around each turn buoy.

Second half of the swim my arms started to lose there umph, not sure if that's a product of swim training or the cold freezing up some muscle groups. But before I knew it, it was time to get out.

A bit of a grassy mud pit running up the hill from the lake that I had to be careful with. Also, instead of peeling off the top half of my wetsuit as I ran to T1, as I normally would, I kept it on until I almost reached my bike. I was feeling a little cold and stiff. In, fact I really struggled to get my wetsuit off with quasi numb hands. To make it worse my suit got stuck on my watch which caused some buttons to get pressed, throwing off the whole multi-sport mode lap feature.

Not my best T1 but kinda didn't care, I just wanted to move onto the bike.

11/28
59/238

After emerging from the lake I though I would've been fairly cold on the bike, at least initially, but not so. Instead I spent the next few minutes fooling around with my watch trying to get some sort of data tracking going, all while not paying attention to where I was riding.

I should say my feet were cold, but actually they had gone completely numb, almost no feeling at all. I tried wiggling my toes around while pedaling in attempt to get some feeling back, but it was to no avail. But, it wasn't hurting nor impacting my performance so I mostly just put it out of my mind.

The only thing really of note was how horrible a condition a few sections of Raytown Road were. This past winter really did a number on some of the older roads in the city and this road was no exception. There were parts were you couldn't really afford to put your head down and grind; you had to be extra aware. A few times I hung out in the left lane in between passing because the center line had non-stop gashes. With that said, it wasn't too big a deal as long as you paid attention. Also, with the rain gone the wind had almost disappeared and the roads were fairly dry by the time we hit the asphalt.

Overall, upon reflection, the effort level on my behalf seemed high but mental intensity was a bit low which kinda in turn means I might a left some speed in the tank when I could have afforded to burn some.

Sooooo, I never did regain feeling in my feet during the bike, which meant it felt really weird standing up on a part of your body you can't feel. This makes putting on socks very awkward. I got one sock on ok, but then I almost fell over getting the other on and that resulted in me almost taking the entire bike rack out with me. So I literally had to sit down on the ground in transition to put on my sock. SMH. After that I was on the move. Again, very weird running on feet that you cannot feel.

7/28
44/238

First off, I didn't really get feeling back in my feet until part of lap two and even then it was partial. But, like the bike, it wasn't impacting my performance so I mostly just put the issue into the back of my mind. I passed a lot of sprint course racers. I saw no male Olympic distance racers at all, or really anyone to push me or dare me to go quicker, so it became mostly an individual race at this point. I wasn't feeling particularly quick but my splits were very decent and that made me happy. When those splits continued on to lap two, I continued to be happy. I'm so glad when things don't deteriorate and fall apart. Weather-wise it was perfect conditions, so that was working very much in our favor.

When all was said and done I was finishing my 7th KC Triathlon.

Oddly, I think I only saw one or two people I knew at this local race, so I didn't do much chatting or hanging out afterwards. While others were still racing and finishing up some dark clouds started to approach with rain. I took that as my cue to get packed up and get home.


The weather and the cold caused my to check out a bit mentally. Ultimately I think that reduced my intensity and in turn the effort that I put out.


Ultramax, would you please come take over the Legend races? Thanks for the post race atmosphere, with Ironband playing, music, beer on tap post race, and a bbq food truck. Beer glasses (not goggles), trucker hats, and nice t-shirts for swag was nice too.