The swim start was kind of a melee. I've only done a couple of wave starts like that before, but this one was the worst yet. A little nudging, elbows, even a few kicks is bound to happen, but no one could see the first buoy so we were just swimming all over each other trying to find a line and stay somewhat on course.

Swim time includes about a 100 yard run uphill over grass to T1, so the course was short. I don't know how short, but short. In other words, my time is kind of meaningless, because I don't know how far the actual swim was, what kind of split I had, and whether it was near goal pace.

No real option, so I guess nothing.

The transition went fine, but getting onto the bike and getting clipped in sucked. I wasted 15 seconds messing around getting my pedals clipped in and riding.

Pull it together mentally and get going.

Though my time was more or less fine, the bike leg was pretty mediocre. My legs felt sluggish pretty much right out of the gate and my breathing was ragged through the first half of the bike leg. Even though I can't really complain about the speed or pace, mentally and physically it just didn't feel good.

Thank god I know the park and the course, because there were at least 2 unmarked turns on the course without volunteers.

I don't know, settle in and pace better. I need a mental strategy to deal with things not feeling "right." I expected the course to feel familiar and for my legs to react like they normally do, and then I felt like I just had no jump. Need to think about how to react mentally to that condition and adjust.

This was pretty quick. Very slight hang up getting my running shoes on, but I was out of there quickly. I probably need to practice riding with shoes on top of pedals more and jumping off the bike, but that's a couple of seconds tops.

Nothing

This is the only part of the race that I was fairly pleased with. I basically matched my best open 5K time in this race. That's a very promising sign that I'm getting a little faster where I need the most speed. Still, I was passed by 4 guys on the run, so that part sucks.

Coming back in, they didn't mark the course well and didn't have enough volunteers in place to direct people. Matt was saying that the winner had to basically run around the finish and back in, because no one was prepared. What a joke.

Nothing, I ran relaxed, with good form and high cadence, pushed pace but felt steady, and didn't relax anywhere on the course. This was a pretty decent run for me.

Stretching and walking around. Searching desperately for water and something half way decent to eat. Who the hell serves pizza, pretzels and beer at 8 am, and doesn't offer immediately available water and gatorade, bananas and oranges? I'm not trying to be a health weeny either, I just can't come off a triathlon where I pushed to the point of near puking and take in beer and pizza immediately.


Poor mental game today, and my legs felt sluggish.


I have two overall thoughts about this race. The first is that the field was a lot tougher than I expected. Looking at the past few years results, my time would have placed me at least top 5. So mentally, it was a little discouraging to come out of the water with about 10 people in front of me, then transition to the bike where I couldn't catch any of them, and then transition to the run where I got passed a couple of times. Even though I beat my goal time by a minute and a half, I can't help walking away from this race feeling a little dissapointed. And I think that feeling contributed heavily to feeling like I just wasn't going that fast during the race. Looking at my pacing and result, I can't complain, but while I was racing I just felt slow, and I wonder if that was more related to the competition than my own performance. In the future, I obviously need to focus on myself and not worry about the competition, but right now I can't get past the feeling that I could have and should have gone faster and placed higher.

The second thing, which will probably sound a little like sour grapes after that first thought, is that this race was disorganized, the DAC skimped on everything, and the overall event sucked. Race fees are getting too expensive to have balloons for buoys, all black print crappy looking t-shirts, disorganized and poorly marked course and transition areas, too few volunteers, nasty food, and a shortage of prizes. Again, this will sound like sour grapes, but they claim on the website to give prizes for the top 3 in each AG, and they only gave prizes for top two. That just sucks. The DAC is known in this community as the ritzy athletic club, and the Rattlesnake race last year made this race look like some kind of backwater, podunk, crap-fest. In short, that was the first and last DAC Sprint triathlon for me.