I felt really strong during this swim. I don't even know how to really describe it, but I just felt on. I felt like I was gliding through the water and to my surprise I kept catching people from the waves that went ahead of me. I also was able to do the swim almost exclusively as free. I did take a couple of breast stroke strokes on two occasions just because I was having issues sighting the buoy due to the sun and I wanted to make sure I had the right line. I didn't feel panicky like I have in the past and everything just felt good.

It would be good to work more on sighting so I don't need to take those breast strokes to feel comfortable with where I am.

My transition here wasn't smooth at all. I struggled with getting the wetsuit off (as I commented above it got stuck on my heels), I also feel like I took too long to get my socks and shoes on. One little annoying thing is I got stuck behind someone who wasn't running with her bike out and just taking her time, which slowed my transition by a second or two.

Work on the basics of transitioning with taking off the wetsuit and getting my shoes on. I also wasted a couple of seconds in transition grabbing water. I am comfortable enough now on the bike that I can just drink on the ride. In my earlier triathlon life, I wasn't as comfortable with that and tried to avoid drinking on the bike if I could but that is no longer the case.

I don't think I executed this bike as well as I am capable of. It wasn't necessarily a bad bike in terms of time or pace, but I know I am capable of more. I didn't do as good a job on the hills as I would have liked, and I felt like I had issues finding the race pace I wanted to hit and settling in. There was more of a head wind on the back half of the ride, so it is a little slower but I was starting to feel more comfortable at that point in that race with where my effort level was at. Overall, I know I am capable of more.

Settle into a comfortable pace sooner, don't feel like you have to hold back on the start and get going feeling motivated right away.

This transition was okay. It has been a while since I have done true transitions so of course everything was rusty so I don't feel great about it but it is what it is. I do think this transition was a little smoother than my swim to bike transition though.

I decided to make a goal for this run of "you cannot walk during this run". My self talk was to just focus on the cadence and keep moving my feet. At the time I made this goal I did not realize how "hilly" this course was (I feel kind of dumb calling it hilly because there were only a couple of steep hills, but there was a pretty long steady incline, even though it wasn't necessarily steep). At times I was really struggling on the hills/inclines, to the point where I was running below 6 minutes per kilometer, but I was still running. The long incline was during kilometer 3, which is where my pace was the slowest. But I kept telling myself that once I get to the turnaround it is downhill and I can get back to a pace I would like to be, which I did acheive. In an ideal world, I would love to run the whole 5K between 5:00 and 5:15/km, but sometimes the course is a slower course. This is a course that played to my weaknesses (hills/increases) so I did struggle but I didn't give up so I am happy about that.

Despite being a little slower overall than I would have liked for the run, I honestly don't know if there is anything I would do differently because I met all of my goals. I want to just do more of the same. I do need to practice my hills more, which I have started working on already, so hopefully I will get more comfortable on the hills and speed will come with that.

Didn't do a proper warm down :(


This was my first real triathlon since 2019 so my transitions were a little rusty, which probably had some impact on my speed there. My lack of practice with handling hills. I also spend a lot of my time running on paved sidewalks/roads/paths and I don't love running on grass and gravel but it might be worth to practice that a little more. Luckily, the campground gravel path was pretty packed and didn't bother me too much. I also just wasn't happy with my bike in general, and feel like I am stronger than my performance was. I am not sure what exactly limited my performance with that. Maybe nerves of the first race back and holding back because I was worried about the bike to run transition. I didn't need to hold back as much as I did.