I neatly avoided the craziness of the start by staying a bit off to the left and in the back. As I got going, I had no problems navigating around the folks in front of me, and eventually ended up next to another lady, and we swam side-by-side, stroke-for-stroke nearly the entire way. It was pretty cool. I had a weird moment when my brain decided I was approach the buoy from a totally different angle/perspective than I was, and I ended up completely confused, thinking I was way off course. Not sure why that was. It's never happened before. Then, at end, calves were crampy and I had to do breast stroke. While that may have cost me a minute, I ended up swimming 4 minutes faster than last year (and people still said the course was long).

Keep my head on straight. Not cramp so I can maintain freestyle to the end.

Transitions this year have been a bit slow as I deal with adding Garmin stuff (for HR) to my routine (have to turn it on...)

Be more organized and smooth.

Bleah. My biking of late has been off and sluggish. Not sure why as swimming and running are okay. This was significantly slower than I wanted. But heart rate was fine and even a bit too low.

Just go faster.

Again, too much fiddling with the Garmin.

Well, at least I've got running. Very happy as this is the fastest 10k in a tri I've ever run.