I lined up in the second row of swimmers and picked the spot I wanted to head for. I bought a new pair of mirror goggles that I planned to swim in as this swim starts directly into the sun – but this turned out to be a non-issue since there was fog on the water and we could hardly see the last set of buoys, luckily I’d brought a pair of clear goggles. The announcer told us 90sec to go and for some reason I caught myself looking at the ankles of the guys in front of me and staring at their timing chips. Timing Chip – OMG!!!, it’s in my helmet from when I put on my wetsuit. I tore off the beach and raced for transition, grabbed the strap, ran back to the beach and put on the strap just as they announced 10sec to go. That got the HR going a little quicker than I’d expected.

When the horn sounded, I got a good jump on the group and found myself in reasonably clear water for about the first 30sec, but then got swallowed up as everybody came together, and I felt like I was the sardine in the middle of the can. This actually wasn’t a bad thing as I was having trouble finding the buoys and having swimmers on both sides helped point me in the general direction of where I needed to go. I was surprised how fast we came up on the tail group of the previous wave, but realized as we got further from the beach that the water was a little choppy, and this was causing issues for some people. Finally got my bearings right and hit the buoys just the way I wanted to. Once we made the turn for home I had to breast stroke a couple of times because I was having trouble again sighting the buoys and the group had really thinned out, and I wasn’t relying on those around me.

This swim was in no way fast, but considering I came out of the water 8th AG, and within about 30sec of most of the other guys at the top of my AG I look at this as one of my more successful swims.


Don’t leave the timing chip behind…

This wasn’t fast, but it wasn’t slow, just average. Keep getting the wetsuit stuck on the ankles and need to look at getting some different spray to help slide the suit off better. Grabbed clear glasses for the ride, and off I went.

Get faster...

The goal was to aim for between 92-95% of FTP on this ride and since you have to climb a hill straight out of transition, getting the power up quickly was not an issue. Got into aero reasonably quickly and tried to mark a guy from my AG that was a few meters ahead of me, but he got away too quickly. Found myself moving well, putting out a good power number, and passing a lot of people from the earlier waves. The ride was pretty uneventful for the most part, and while I was managing to pass a good number of people I wasn’t finding anyone in my AG. Of course I had to screw something up, and in this case it was my Garmin. I like to get lap intervals every 5km, but forgot to set it up before the ride. No problem, I’ll just hit the lap button every 10min instead – oops, that just set of the Multisport mode and now it thinks I’m in transition. So I messed around with the Garmin to reset it for just bike, and then got myself refocused.

Somewhere around 2/3 of the ride power started to drop off. The legs felt like they were still pushing, but looking at the ride file afterwards, HR also dropped off a fair bit – so the effort I thought I was putting out wasn’t matching the power or HR numbers I should have been at. With about 3km to go I got passed for the first time by a guy in the 50-54AG, and he was moving along, and I wasn’t able to keep him in sight. This was the only guy to come past me during the ride, so I took that as a positive sign.

All in all this was a good ride, but I have a habit of starting to think about the run a little early and then a tendency to back off the power level on the bike as a result (also went out quite hard which may have impacted me a bit). My AG position off the bike was good, but I needed to be about 2min quicker to stick with the faster guys in the AG on this day. Need to focus on the bike this winter.


Force myself to push a little bit harder in the back half of the course and use those power numbers as a whip to make sure I stay more honest.

I practiced where my spot was before the race start and counted the number of racks – and still lost my spot. Stood around for about 15sec trying to figure where the heck my stuff was. Once I actually got racked I saw that there were only 2 bikes on the rack I figured I was in a good position, but also knew that guys could have been on overflow racks.

Don't get lost on the way to your spot.

Ran out of transition and took a quick look at my wrist, and realized the Garmin was still on the bike – crap. I don’t like to run by RPE, I want to know my pace, because I have a habit of going too hard, or in many cases, too easy. Just under a km into the run I could hear footsteps behind me and as the guy came up to me I asked what pace he was running. He didn’t have his watch either, but figured he was running a 3:50/km pace and since he was 19, and I was not capable of that pace, I wished him luck. About 1km later another guy caught up to me, and was kind enough to share that he was running about a 4:10/km pace, so I stuck with him. At that point I figured I must have been running much slower than intended, but keeping up with this guy wasn’t completely easy, and it worked to my advantage as I had someone to pace off, and I just hoped he would hold this pace. We passed some folks from earlier waves, but again, no-one in my AG.

With about 1.5km to go I pulled up next to my pacer and asked what AG he was in (he had on calf sleeves) and since he was in 35-39, I said “Good – at least we don’t have to race to the end”. At that point I picked up the pace and he fell off pretty quickly, which I took as a sign that I likely should have been pushing my own pace a little harder earlier on. Finished with no-one else really around and the family cheers to bring me through the finishing chute.


Should have pushed harder – I’ve run faster on this course before, and the fitness is at a level at the moment where this should have been doable. I think I held back a little too much and a little too long on the run this time.

They were handing out non-alcoholic beer at the finish, and I must admit it tasted pretty good. Stretched out, talked to family and checked the results, and was happy to see I would stick around for AG awards.


Deep down fear of making myself suffer more!


First Try a Tri was at this course, and I've raced it every year since. I'll be back again next year.