4 of us in lane 1. Started behind a girl that said she’d do 4min flat, very steady pace. I tried to convince swim coach Chad to go in front of me so I could be 3rd but he wouldn’t because he said he was shooting for ~4:20 or 4:30. Todd didn’t belong in our wave so he went last. At Chad’s suggestion, I started just a few seconds behind the girl instead of waiting for the whistle. We were gelling the entire swim: good pace and good spacing. At 150yrds I saw the lock @ 1:57, so fell off pace a bit. Got out of the water at 4:07 (making the swim time ~4:04 or 4:05). Swim leg felt great.

nothing

Felt good and efficient going through this transition. Didn’t have much to do because of the race distance and luckily it warmed up so I didn’t have to put on any clothes. Glasses & helmet on, grab bike, and run. Ryan (who I was banking to be my competition) had racked just beside me and showed up at his bike just after me.

Backing into my times I calculate over 1.5min for this transition. It felt like a 1 min transition to me and I don’t think it could have gone much better.

Got a good jump on my bike coming out of t1, right next to Ryan. Lamar is a nice downgrade so the extra momentum helps for getting feet in the shoes. But I fumbled this up pretty good. I just couldn’t get the feet to get into the shoes. Tried multiple times and lost momentum twice. Finally was able to get them in after opening them back up with my hands. Strangely I wasn’t passed during any of this, but by the time we took the turn onto Main Ryan opened up a pretty good gap (~150yrds or so). I hammered up Main and felt like I closed on him a bit. 136th and Sheridan were discouraging because of the strong headwinds (and these were supposed to be the fast downhills).
Focused on efficiency and hammering, not letting Ryan open any more up. We passed a relay guy on the back of the 1st lap and I took someone else at the close of the 1st lap. After that, I was pretty sure Ryan and I were 1 and 2 on the course. Going up Main the second time a car was trying to pull into a parking lot and stopped, because of large bump I guess. This was right in front of me and I was doing over 20mph at the time. I thought he’d move but he didn’t and I ended up locking my tire and skidding (nothing like shaving down a piece of a brand new $100 tubular). Man did I give him and earfull - I don’t know what he was thinking. I asked the two officers at the next intersection to watch that lot. OK. Brief distraction and good loss of momentum - let's get back into the race.
Finishing the climb up main I calculated Ryan ~30s ahead of me. I knew it would be very remote that I’d be able to close on him on the run so I pushed a more but never did put much into the gap.

Need to be more efficient coming out of t1. The uphill section at the 5430 Sprint won’t be as forgiving as the course.

Nearly perfect. Didn’t see Ryan at all in t2 but his front tire was spinning pretty good when I got to the rack. I had trouble putting on my right shoe since it was damp and numb. Ended up having to sit down briefly to get it on. Had to reach back up to grab my garmin from my bike, then was off.

Very good transition. The shoe and garmin cost me a few seconds. Definitely could shave a few seconds here.

Didn’t feel great coming out of t2, but didn’t feel lousy either. Focusing on fast turnover and efficient form. Wanted to get the legs under me by ~1/2mi then start pushing the pace. I could see Ryan about 200yds ahead of me. Pushed it a bit going out and had to regroup after the turn coming up the road, but then started to focus on closing out the run.
Paul was on the mtb riding the course with me. he took a few pics and they all look like I'm in a lot of pain. I tried to talk to him a few times, but my throat was very dry and couldn't.
Fell off the leader the last half of the run and pretty much maintained pace until the very end. Uneventful.

More mental toughness. I didn’t shut it down, but I didn’t give it all in the last half of the run either.

a lot of socializing. Good chatting with Richard and a lot of people from Masters.


All that chasing Ryan was fun and a motivator, but we ended up getting chanced down from behind by Dime! Naturally, in retrospect, I regret helping Dime get into the race at the last minute. I honestly thought the course was short enough that he wouldn’t be able to bridge the swim times. He did it in style and crushed us! Not even close, showing his superiority!