Great job finishing what you started.

I've heard from others that the bike course was in pretty bad shape.  Here are some of their comments. I think that you'll find broad agreement that both the course and conditions were bad.

• Knew from the bike recon the course was rough - holes, gravel, bumps - and with the rain, even more opportunity for mechanicals/crashes so focus was steady and safe ... get to T2
• Bike was nail biting.  5 hours of rain, difficult roads, wet brakes on the downhill with turns and gravel at the bottom.   What I did right:  Meticulously stuck with my nutrition and power numbers.   Twice I was forced to stop in order to get my gear out of first gear and moving again across the other gears.  I had 32 COG cassette which worked fine in training but not so good IRL with rain, grit and mud
• Moved through T1, started the bike. It was already raining, so I had to focus on the road to avoid the obstacles. Lots of up, down, turns. There's a very dangerous downhill that I braked the entire way down. You could hear tires pop in the potholes, a guy goes down right behind me with the horrible sound of flesh vs. pavement, then carbon vs. pavement. A few miles later, I hit a hidden obstacle in my aerobars. It launched me forward and off my aerobars and seat. My taintal area bounced off the top tube (overrated experience), and amazingly I was able to grab a bullhorn with my left and in what felt like mid-air flight. I was probably only going 15 mph, but it still would have hurt. Both aerobar ends rotated right about 15 degrees and stayed there the rest of the ride. ... At 65, we turned S into some wind. The rain stopped, but all the mud turned my drivetrain into a chainsaw. Rain returned an hour later, which cleaned the bike and silenced the drivetrain (waxed chain in rain is $).

What would I do differently?

• RainX sunglass lenses... hard to see bike computer and impossible to see run watch with "cheater" sunglasses.

What should we know about this race

• roads suck

Great job finishing what you started.

I've heard from others that the bike course was in pretty bad shape.  Here are some of their comments. I think that you'll find broad agreement that both the course and conditions were bad.

• Knew from the bike recon the course was rough - holes, gravel, bumps - and with the rain, even more opportunity for mechanicals/crashes so focus was steady and safe ... get to T2
• Bike was nail biting.  5 hours of rain, difficult roads, wet brakes on the downhill with turns and gravel at the bottom.   What I did right:  Meticulously stuck with my nutrition and power numbers.   Twice I was forced to stop in order to get my gear out of first gear and moving again across the other gears.  I had 32 COG cassette which worked fine in training but not so good IRL with rain, grit and mud
• Moved through T1, started the bike. It was already raining, so I had to focus on the road to avoid the obstacles. Lots of up, down, turns. There's a very dangerous downhill that I braked the entire way down. You could hear tires pop in the potholes, a guy goes down right behind me with the horrible sound of flesh vs. pavement, then carbon vs. pavement. A few miles later, I hit a hidden obstacle in my aerobars. It launched me forward and off my aerobars and seat. My taintal area bounced off the top tube (overrated experience), and amazingly I was able to grab a bullhorn with my left and in what felt like mid-air flight. I was probably only going 15 mph, but it still would have hurt. Both aerobar ends rotated right about 15 degrees and stayed there the rest of the ride. ... At 65, we turned S into some wind. The rain stopped, but all the mud turned my drivetrain into a chainsaw. Rain returned an hour later, which cleaned the bike and silenced the drivetrain (waxed chain in rain is $).

What would I do differently?

• RainX sunglass lenses... hard to see bike computer and impossible to see run watch with "cheater" sunglasses.

What should we know about this race

• roads suck