One of my best swims I've ever had. I know I struggle with what a hard swim feels like and I don't push my swim as much as I push it on the bike and the run. Today at the start I told myself "sprint like you do for the bike and the run".I also reminded myself "this should hurt a little". It is easy for me to get into that zone biking and running but swimming has always been more challenging to push into that somewhat painful spot. This race is also great for not amazing swimmers because it is a time trial start. Each wave starts during a certain window and they release 4 or 5 swimmers every 5 seconds. 5 seconds doesn't sound like much but it makes it so much more spread out and you can swim your race without being kicked, punched, etc.

stripped the wetsuit, said hello to a friend in T1 at the same time and ran my bike out

This bike course is not a fast course. There are multiple sharp turns, river road isn't the best biking surface and the course is very very crowded. Luckily everyone out on the race course has to deal with that stuff! The timing chip tracks how many people you pass. During the bike I passed 270 people. That means I yelled "on your left" at least 200 times. ha!
There was one other woman hammering it out there with me. Her and I ended up finishing 1/2 in our AG for the bike splits. Last year I got a tri bike and I definitely think it gives me a little bit of an advantage.

Oh, Sarah. I turned the wrong way out of my bike rack and took the long way out of T2. Oops!

A great run for me. Over the last week my left calf cramped up on two separate runs so I was very nervous starting this run. I kept thinking "when is my calf going to cramp?" I let that kind of consume my thoughts for the first mile or so. Then I did some positive self talk and tried to not worry about it. This is a flat fast run around nokomis. I've ran around nokomis thousands of times which is kind of helpful. I know exactly where along the course and can use that to my advantage. I took a GU with about 2 miles left in the bike and that definitely helped my run.
In the last 800M I was passed by a woman in my AG. She ended up wining our AG and beating me by less than 30 seconds. She put down a fast run of close to 7 minutes per mile. That feels out of my reach but now I am thinking "man, I could have stayed with her".

This race is amazing and lets friends and family finish with you for the last 100 yards. The girls sprinted in with me and I looked at my watch and i was so excited!! I took close to 3 minutes off my time at this race 2 years ago when I did it last.
I honestly can't believe the times I threw down today. I had a good swim, a good bike and a good run. So hard to put all three together in one day and I did it today. The weather was perfect. I executed my race, had a blast and just felt great out there. My time put me at 10th overall in a race with more than 1200 women and 7 of the 9 women that beat me are elites. Just two age groupers ahead of me. What a day!!
I tell my girls "you have a strong mom" and today I got to show them. They got to see all different shapes, sizes, ages, races of women out there doing something amazing with our bodies.
I love this race and I will keep coming back every single year.


The YWCA women's triathlon is a top notch race. Great venue, great volunteers, great course, great post race food, great expo. It is an amazing race if you are brand new to the sport and it is an amazing race if you've done 100 triathlons. Every woman should experience this race!