I felt I did a good job keeping my cool and just swimming at my own pace. I even managed to draft behind a few people until they started swimming all over the place - I just kept swimming by myself to the first buoy. I felt pretty good swimming along and as I passed one guy doing the breaststroke, I gave him some encouragement and saw him get a big smile and pick up the pace a little bit - that felt great. Pretty much did the whole swim freestyle (or that swimming thing I do that can vaguely be interpreted as freestyle) with the exception of a few congested areas where I did two or three strokes of breaststroking just to get my head out of the water higher to see better. Overall, I felt good. I got out of the water in 10:53 (actual swim pace 2:11/100 yards), but had a 1/8 mile jog up a hill to get to the transition area, and that time is included in the swim time.

Not much during a race, just spend more time swimming and perfecting.

It went so well that I spent the first 2 miles of the bike trying to figure out what I forgot :) NOTHING! I guess I'm a solid MOP'er for transitions...

AG 21/47
OA 152/465

Not much. Took my time to get everything right.

Had a good bike ride, but I probably pushed it a little too hard. Managed 49 mph on the back side of Pinch Road, but ran out of gears - I was really hoping to top 50 mph because the road was really dry. Some wind on Cider Press Road had me working a little harder than I wanted to. I was dissappointed to see so many packs of 5+ people on much of the bike course. As I approaced the last hill, there was some car traffic that slowed everyone down and I lost some momentum. I ended up stopping for a minute to catch my breath at the bottom of the hill because I started feeling light headed... Got passed by about 8 people, got back on my bike and kept going.

Take it just a little easier - I need to learn how to pace myself over the whole race, not just one sport at a time... However, I did much better at pacing myself on the bike that I did last year :)

A little bit of a Chucky-Foxtrot getting back to the transition area between the runners coming in and out and cyclists coming in and out. The dismount line was black spray paint on asphalt - doh!. Some guy was calling blocking on me going into the timing mat chute. Sorry man, but I kinda take up the whole thing - too bad for you...

AG 22/47
OA 221/465

Not much. Took my time to get everything right.

This is where things went south. My knee started acting up right away and in an attempt to not make my knee hurt, I kept locking up my calves... Better to slow down and finish healthy than push the wrong thing too much, get hurt and blow the rest of my season. There will be other races. Probably walked about 1/3 of the course. I felt bad mostly because I was wearing my TnT gear. I know that TnT'ers have a mostly undeserved reputation for being bad newbies - but how does anyone know anything about me? I'm afraid that they saw some big fat guy who didn't prepare for the race, who was taking it easy, blah, blah, blah, blah... So, I made up for that by running as much as I could without damaging anything, cheering for as many people as I could (TnT or not) and thanking every volunteer that I saw out on the course. In all honesty, I really don't care if I had a crap race - because life happens. But I hate to do a bad job representing a great organization that does great work.

Nothing. I did the best I could have.

My honored teammate (this was my first TnT event) was there today. It was really cool to see him along the finish route of the run and he gave me a high five. I got a TnT finishers medal which I gave to him.


Nohting, really. I did the best I could with what I had with me both mentally and physically.


Very well run - with the exception of T2. I will certainly do it again next year if I am able to. Water station at the exit of T2 and at the turn around for the run.