The swim was an odd one as I normally do not swim very well, but today seemed to be over the top. Right from the start things were off, within the first 50 meters the 3 guys in front of me just stood up creating a wall I couldn't get through. This forced me to the same to figure out what was going on. It was like a bottleneck of traffic coming to a screeching halt. I identify my exit strategy and was able to go to the inside of the course and have a nice open shot to the 1st buoy. But even from this point I was uncomfortable, it felt like my feet were anchors dragging behind me and I could not really get into a groove. This lasted almost the entire race and instead of fighting the nonsense I just kept pushing to the next buoy until the swim was over

Train more for swimming

not sure what happened here, it did not feel as long as it was. everything went smoothly

HOLY COW! This effort was through the roof for the entire race. Right out of transition my legs were burning, I fiured that I would get a few miles in and then dial back the effort so that I did not blow up my run. Well a few miles turned into several and the next thing I knew my thighs were burning and I was half way through the race. I figured that by this point it was too late to "conserve" any energy and decided to just keep pushing the red line and let everything fall as they may. Lap results (3 miles each)
Lap 1: 7:55 AVG HR 152 AVG SP 22.7 MPH
Lap 2: 7:52 AVG HR 155 AVG SP 22.8 MPH
Lap 3: 8:11 AVG HR 153 AVG SP 22.0 MPH
Lap 4: 7:57 AVG HR 152 AVG SP 22.6 MPH
Mile 5: 7:44 AVG HR 149 AVG SP 23.3 MPH

One other item to note is that my overal effort was extremely consistent for the entire ride. I would shift up and down through the gearing but never really let up on the pedals. I think the only let up was when I grabbed the water bottle off of the downtube twice to quench my thirst. From looking at the date the owest cadence across the 41 minutes was 2 drops down to around 60 ad most likely this was when I was getting a drink.

nothing, I pushed to the edge and then hug there until the end of the race. I do not believe there was much more in the tank even if I wanted to push harder

No problems here, for the 1st time in a race I came in with feet out of shoes and jumped off the bike running. Racked my bike and switched my gear with no problems. Felt bad for a minute when another person was trying to talk about the bike ride next to me and I just kind a blew him off and mumled something as I ran out, but who has time to discuss the past when there was still fun to be had.

This tuned out to be a fairly decent run, coming off of the bike I fully expected the run to be a crawl. I had put so much energy into the bike that there was no way I was going to be able to turn into a decent run.
Well coming out of transition, my legs were moving and actually felt decent as I came up to speed. 1st mile went off without any real issues. I came up and cruised past several other runners. I believe at this point my past was somehwere around 6:45. I kept up the pace out to the turn around and then ran into a few issues. My legs started to falter and I was struggling to hold on, at this point I hit the one downfall of the run. I allowed myself to pull off the effort and cruise for a few minutes. I should have pushed thorugh and kept the effrt red-lining but I just couldnt pull through. This lasted for maybe 1/2 mile until mile 2 clicked on my watched and I seen the pace had dropped off. At this point I decided there was only a mile left and the harder I ran the quicker it would be over so I pushed through, which involved a lot of yelling at myself that I wa snot done yet and that I had to work harder if I wanted the time. I'm sure that other runners thought I was off my rocker but it did the trick. I was able to will myself back into a better pace and push the run back to the finish
Mile 1: 6:42 AVG HR 161
Mile 2: 7:13 AVG HR 168
Mile 3: 6:58 AVG HR 169

hold onto the red-line for the entire race, if thats possible.