As usual, I freakin' panicked for the first 200 yards of the swim. I don't know why I didn't get in the water and do a lot of swimming before hand. I found myself getting in the water and looking at the course for the first time moments before the gun. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Swim beforehand. I swam between .5 and .75 miles on Saturday at Eagleman and had the most enjoyable swim ever. I need to make it a point to swim in the swim course before the race if I can and I could have here.

T1 was fine. No real issues.

Nothing.

Did I mention it started raining in my last 200 yards in the lake? It absolutely POURED on my first 2 laps on the bike. Oddly, it didn't really bother me though. Other then being hilly, it is not a super-technical course and there aren't a lot of sharp turns. You definitely aren't going to blitz this course on speed though unless you are a super hill climber.

Not much really. I thought I'd be faster on the bike but it really is a pretty uphill course.

Everything in T2 was soaked. Fortunately my Zoot Advantage with speed laces go on pretty easy.

Nothing. It was fine.

It quickly became apparent that my expected run times would need to be adjusted to accommodate trail running. I am not a big trail runner and run them cautiously because it is more important to me to stay healthy the go fast and risk injury. As mentioned there were parts of the trail that were tight and with both Olympic & Sprint runners on it the first lap was very busy. In the uphill sections the walkers were using the best part of the trail (to the right where they should have been) leaving the rutted, rockier parts to those passing. Had it been a sunny, hot day I probably would have enjoyed the shaded run. As I am not a big trail runner, I really didn't so much enjoy the run.

Perhaps go a bit harder on the second loop where I knew the less tricky sections of the trail & when there were less people.

Ate a Bagel, cheese & egg sandwich. :)


Mostly the mental aspect of the swim.


Overall the race was good. I think there are some growing pains here. As mentioned by another reviewer maybe revise the start schedule to let the sprint go first. They will be done and off the course so there is less crossover between the Olympic & Sprint.

Also, they need a volunteer or even a ranger to not let vehicles entering the day use area come all the way to the bottom of the driveway. This would be normal if a race were not occurring, but this brought a couple vehicles right into the chute for bike in/out. My wife was watching and saw a couple near bike/car collisions as a result.

The race is getting big enough that first-come-first-served is no longer adequate for transition. Left to our own devices, we are terrible at bike racking. There was enough rack space for everyone but bikes were too spread out. Even if the racks aren't going to have assigned numbers, then rack spaces should be delineated to allow more people to fit in. There were a couple bikes propped at the ends of racks that wasn't good.

There were no volunteers watching transition. Anyone dressed in race gear (or even not in race gear) could have walked out with whatever bike or other equipment they wanted.

This probably sounds like a lot of complaints but the race, overall, was fine. Just thing the RD needs to pay attention to going forward especially if the race grows. Check-in, timing, etc. were all fine.