At least this year I was better prepared for a quicker pace. Last year everyone blazed out of the start, and I was like..WTF? The run was pretty good, not too hard and the last part is down hill which makes for some good speed with low effort.

Get in better shape.

Since I don't plan on wearing speed laces at Ironman, I didn't wear them at this race. It probably cost me some time. Other than that, no problems finding my bike.

Well, with my new (new to me) bike and fancy race wheels and a year of training under my belt, I was over a minute slower than last year when I rode my '87 Cannondale (RIP), with 12 speeds and no aero bars. I'm pretty bummed out about the bike split. I was scared to go fast down the hills, because I pretty much have only ridden my bike off the trainer at SOMA and on one ride with some ESCKTC folks last month. People were flying by me on the dowhill in full aero position, but I really didn't want to wreck and I just didn't feel comfortable over about 28 mph, I stayed up on my bars (didn't ride the brakes). I did pass several people on the up hill sections, but I don't think I made the kind of gaps that other people made on me on the down hill sections.

Get more comfortable on my bike to go faster, or sell it all on ebay and buy a huffy which I would probably go faster on.

Nothing special in T2. They had these new bike racks that have slots for your wheel instead of the standard bars like most races have. It worked pretty well except for one small problem. If someone puts their wheel in the wrong slot at T2 (not hard to do, because they weren't pre-marked), then it creates a musical chairs type scenario so that everyone else on the side that got shorted has to put theirs in the wrong slot too. Because the racks were very full, the last person in was left with no where to rack their bike. They need to do some sort of labeling system so people don't accidentaly put their bikes in the wrong slot.

My legs were toast, worse than SOMA. I just couldn't get them to move. Ironically, they finally started to feel better on the steep hill about 1.5-2 miles in. There was a dude going really slow in front of me down the steep decline, I probably could have picked up a little time if he wasn't there, but not much.

None.


I'm not in good enough shape. Generally bummed out about doing worse than last year which was only my second multisport event ever.