I thought my swim was absolutely average in performance. Considering i felt like i worked on my swim more than most other things, I am surprised I did not fair better. My HR was around 170 when I finally got my strap on in T1, which means I swam slow with an elevated HR. Will have to work on that one.

Nothing

As I said, my heart rate was very high at the beginning of the bike, so I forced myself to take it easy. Once the HR dropped back down into the 150s, it was ON! I knew the course from prior year so i felt good about pushing myself a bit at certain points. I think my better than expected performance may have something to do with the complete and utter dismay I had for a group of my competitors who took full advantage of the lack of race officials. These guys were drafting like they were in the Tour de France on a team time trial. I got so freaking pissed off that I just took off and waxed 'em.

Wear an official's jersey.

pretty efficient getting through this transition.

I was really nervous that I went too hard on the bike and was going to bonk on the run (as I did last year). To remind and embarass myself, I did the run at a ~11 minute pace last year because I was not wise in my efforts on the bike. I thought i might be in the same boat this year. Did the 1st mile in 8 minutes and then my legs started to recover and the rest were all sub 7s. Unbelievable run for me considering my training coming into this race.

Not a damn thing.

stretching, massage, 3 mile bike ride.


training time.


Kiawah is a great race due to the sweet location and generally fast course. If you are traveling from out of town; the island is DEAD this time of year, so don't bother ponying up the extra cash to stay at the resort - it's a ghost town. Very secluded if you are in to that though.