A solid swim. There was not too much of a battle up front during the start. I thought I was sitting in second in my age group after those first few 100 yards, but upon exiting for my first lap I heard an Ultramax worker radio out that the first white cap (me) was out of the water - which kinda surprised me

When I went back into the water the depth was at an in between level - too high to quickly walk, run or high step through, but not quite deep enough to swim. Well, I swam anyway. After a few strokes my hand was scraping sand. I was passing people who were walking and, truthfully, I should've opted to walk as well. But I felt like I had to stay committed to swimming since everyone around me saw me commit. So I kept swimming.

On the second lap I was found by the guy I thought was leading our AG. He provided me with a nice draft that I was actually able to hold on to. But after rounding a buoy there was just way too much lap traffic and I lost my guide through the chaos. After too much zig zagging around swimmers I finally emerged from the water.

I'll rate this as good because my heart didn't feel like jumping out of my chest on the way to T1 and my wetsuit came off very easily.

6/36
53/291

Not much to say here but I will note a few things:
Not a much wind, but some to keep speeds down on the straight away south-bound run.
Despite my recent bike tune-up my gear shifting sucked. Actual shifting kept getting stuck in between gear levels.
The two or three hills right after the north to south turn around was brutal and slow.
Overall it was a lonely ride. Not much traffic or competition around me the entire ride. Still I was pleased with the time and speed I was able to put together.

IDK, at dismount I wasn't feeling confident about a flying dismount, so I did a stop and slow step off. I did the same thing last year during my first race of the year. I need to be better about doing some practice dismounts before a race.

5/36
39/291

I love being free of my bike and able to run, but today running was not feeling so awesome. Soon after starting I could feel the heat coming off my skin which I tried to cool by dumping water on my skin at the aid stations. But what really summarizes this run is one single question that sat in my head the whole time, which was, "can we please walk now!?"

I was not having a fun time. I was in pain. I kept stringing my mind along saying "we'll totally walk, let's just make it to mile marker 2 then we can." After that my mind again asked if we walk, but I then reasoned that we should totally keep running so that we could say that we didn't walk the first lap, and my mind agreed, so we kept running. Once the first lap was done my mid asked if we could walk, and said "no, there are lots of spectators cheering up ahead and it would be totally embarrassing if we had to walk" and it agreed. Finally, at the only real "hill" of the course, at mile four I relented and walked it, and boy did it feel good to. At the top I started to get going again, but once you get a taste of walking your body wants to do it again. However, I resisted the temptation and the hard sales job my mind was trying to put on me and walk more. I allowed myself to slow down, but not walk, although that slow Felt awfully slow. The run overall was much slower than anticipated but me and my mind finished.

It was either the lack of heat adaptation or I'm just getting older (or both) but I was almost 8 minutes off my best run course time.

Sat in the shade of a food truck and drank water.


Genetics


Another good Ultramax race. I was pretty glad to see Mark Livesay down from Montana to do the race announcing.