The water felt a lot colder than I was expecting, but we were given a good 5 minutes to get into the water before our wave started. I was one of the first in the water and quickly got some water in my wet suit and swam around and warmed up. The water temp felt perfect during the swim.

This was the wildest start I have been involved in yet in a tri. There were 200+ people in my wave. The swim course start is pretty wide, but quickly narrows as you approach the first buoy. There was a good 5 minutes of pretty rough contact. This used to really bother me, but now I can swim pretty aggressively in this type of mess and do just fine. I did get one good kick to the face on my left eye, but no damage done.

Once we got past the first buoy, things opened up and became pretty uneventful. I felt great in the water and tried to draft as much as possible. My sighting was dead on except for a wide turn around one buoy. I really enjoyed this swim and was kind of disappointed when it ended.

I should have started in the front of the pack and possibly avoided some of the contact.

My rack space was as far back from the main pathways through transition as possible. This cost me some time. But I also spent way too much time getting my wet suit off. I was just out of practice and fumbled around too much.

I need to practice getting the wet suit off. I also need to get a pair of tri shoes for the bike and learn to start with them attached to the pedals. It is way past time for me to learn to do that.

I was most worried about the bike segment as I have really under-trained on the bike this year. Overall I felt pretty good. The hills were challenging, but not terrible. I rediscovered how much I enjoy going downhill really, really fast.

I passed the pros coming in as I was heading out, which was fun to see.

I connected pretty early on with two other guys that also had the age 42 on their calves. We went back in forth for several miles. We then caught someone else in our age group and the four of us passed and repassed each other for some time. One guy eventually pulled ahead and another one dropped back. I was back and forth with the remaining guy the rest of the bike.

The bike course was very pretty. Traffic was not bad at first, but was really picking up towards the end. I saw 2 or 3 really dangerous moments with cars trying to get around bikes. I was one of three bikes that were almost run over by a car (official race car?) that was video taping the race. They were paying attention to the bikes behind them with someone hanging out the back filming, crossed the center line and just missed the three of us.

I could have pushed harder.

I got off the bike and felt great. I still felt really strong and ran through transition as fast as possible. I was slowed down a couple of times by the crowds with their bikes moving slowly. I pulled on my running shoes, threw on a hat and took off.

Learn to dismount my bike more quickly.

I started the run feeling great. But we quickly hit that first hill and I was "uh oh." At the top of the hill I caught the one guy that I had been battling on the bike until the end of the bike course. I thought that this would make the run more fun, but when I caught him, he was breathing way too heavily and sounded horrible. He peeled off and stopped on the side of the trail within minutes.

The rain started just a little at this point, but it was light and felt pretty good. I did feel sorry for the spectators with children along the trail at this point, there were several crying kids that did not want to be out in the rain. The rain ended after only a few minutes.

Around mile 2, we were directly across the lake from the finish line and heard the announcer saying that the food tent was now open. From this point on, I could not get the thought of the food waiting for me at the finish line out of my head. This was great motivation.

I knew that this was a really challenging run course with all of the hills, but was not prepared for the number of them. Once we left the park and entered the neighborhood on the second half of the course, the hills just started killing me, especially my right knee. I ended up walking probably 5-6 of the hills.

On the last hill leaving that damn neighborhood, I was walking and a group of girls started yelling at me to start running. I started running and they ran along side cheering me on and kept yelling at me to keep running. I think that if I could just arrange for women to follow me around the run course in every race and yell at me, I would perform much better.

Suck it up and attack the hills a bit more aggresively. Or at least not walk them.

I walked around, stretched and grabbed one of everything in the food tent. I sat on the hill overlooking the finish line and enjoyed the food and the sun for a while. I walked around and talked to some people. I tracked down the 82 year old man that had raced the run leg as part of a relay team and talked to him for a few minutes. He is twice my age and in amazing shape. We can all only hope to be that healthy in our 80's.


Lack of training


This is a great race, I will definitely be back. The course is challenging, but also beautiful.