We swam in this pond that was a lot like Green Lake (for you Seattleites). In other words, it was green, nasty and had little floaty things flying by me. It even gave me an ear-ache, just like Green Lake does (but it might have been from the cold, not nastiness).

First the positive. My navigation was excellent. I sighted very rarely, because once I spotted the buoy I could swim perfectly straight toward it. Even though I was taking the short route between buoys, everyone else seemed to swim wide of them. For that reason, I wasn't really swimming in the pack and didn't get many chances to draft.

Now the negative. Overall it was a pretty crumby swim. The start wasn't good because other swimmers squeezed me out. It was one of those underhanded things where the person shoves up next to me just before the gun goes off, so neither of us had room to swim. My forearms fatigued after just a few minutes, so my catch was way off. I don't know if this was related to the rough start or not. I have been very fatigued all week though, so I'm sure that was involved. I only got a few opportunities to draft, and I blew those opportunities. I just didn't have the strength to stay with any feet, although I think on a good day I would have. The feet were ziggin' and zaggin' anyway because people weren't swimming straight, so I probably dodged a bullet by not following some of them.

After I accepted that this wasn't gonna be the best swim, I swam steadily and took some emphasis off of my kick. I would need my legs later, I figured. The second half of the swim wasn't all that bad, I guess. I just wasn't going that fast.

I think I have to be a lot more rested before a race. I have been racing for about a month straight, and my workout volume has been suffering. If I were rested this would have been a fine swim.

This was actually a very good transition for me. It was slow because the transition zone is huge. The long run out of the swim gave me a chance to get my goggles and stuff off, though. Once I got to my bike, I took my wetsuit off and got my bike gear on without incident. It was lightweight sucky to run 100 yards in my bike shoes to get to the exit, but there wasn't much I could do about that.

Nothing.

The bike was more evidence that I need some rest. I should have been able to do 10-15 more watts easily, but my legs just weren't powerful. Also my heart rate was high. I used a wheel cover for this one, and it seemed somewhat heavy when going uphill. That might just be my perception though.

I felt nauseous after the swim. I had some GU on the bike after 10 minutes, because I wanted to see if my stomach would settle. Having some water helped, but the nausea followed me for the whole bike ride.

Even though my speed was a little slow, I was happy with my place on the bike. I passed three people in the first half of the ride and got good separation from them. Some sickeningly fast juniors from Canada showed up and had a 5-minute lead on everyone...then there was a very long gap...then me. Near the end two bikers passed me, but they both turned out to be on relay teams. According to the results my overall place was 14 after the bike.

Again, I just need rest. I think my decision making was good, and I cornered and climbed pretty well. I just didn't have the strength I would have liked.

This was a really good T2 for me. Again, it was sucky because I had to run a long distance (this time 200 yards) on a potholed grass field in bike shoes, but once I got to my rack I was super quick.

The leaders ran through transition barefoot and kept their shoes on their bikes. I think that played a big role in their time advantage. I gotta learn to do that for courses like this.

Like the rest of the race, this was somewhat subpar. I wore my Zoot Ultras, and they didn't do very well on the trail surface. Before the race, I had hoped to do the run under 17 minutes, and I actually think I could have done that if the run were on a road instead of a trail. I'm not much of a trail runner. And I was very tired after the bike.

When I started the run I didn't see anyone ahead of me. Or behind me. I was all alone. So, I decided my strategy should be to defend my position. My time was already worse than I had hoped, and I had a 5K race planned for the evening, so this seemed like a good plan. Although my cardiovascular system was working very hard, my legs felt reasonably good and my nausea went away as soon as I started running.

I finished the whole first loop without seeing a soul. When I started the second loop, though, other athletes had finished the bike and were working on their first lap. I thought maybe I could catch up to some people on their second lap, but I couldn't tell who was who. So, I just passed everyone as I saw them. It was nice to have people around because it brought out a little bit of killer instinct and made me go a bit faster.

Right before the finish I came up on someone, but he made a little decoy hand motion in the air that I interpreted to mean that he was on his first loop. And he sped up. So I didn't pass him. He was in fact on his second loop and finished 5 seconds ahead of me. I could have kicked him down, I guess, but he was out of my age group so it didn't matter. Since I won my age group, I was happy with this race in the end. In the bike and run my slowness didn't matter much, because being faster wouldn't have changed my finishing place.

Nothing I guess. Okay, let's pretend that I didn't have a 5K in the evening. In that case I should have run harder and I definitely should have kicked that guy down. I was a little lazy in this run, just trying to get it over with because the swim and bike had been so miserable.

I could have used socks or different shoes, too. When I finished the run I looked at one of my Zoots and went, "dang I never noticed that the instep is painted red on these shoes. That's pretty sharp." Well, it wasn't so sharp, after all, because the red was from where my a blister on my foot had bled through the fabric of the shoe. Obviously I took a picture and will be proudly uploading it soon :)

Recovery was the most important part of this race, since I had another race about 8 hours later. I jogged for 3/4 of a mile, ate some food, and stretched. After stretching I jumped in the pond to chill my legs (and clean the stink off of me). On the way home I stopped at a drug store in order to properly treat the open wound on my foot. I was afraid some pond nastiness got in there, and ants were attacking it when I was walking around barefoot after the race. Having to physically remove ants from a wound is enough to convince me to put some antibacterial stuff on there.


I need me some rest. And doubling up on races kept me from doing very well in either of them. Ooh, but who cares? I won my age group!


This race gets a 4 just because the swim start is stupid. We all line up, but the first buoy is 45 degrees to our left so we take off at an angle killing each other.

Other than that detail, the race was very good. The volunteers, race officials, and security all did a great job to keep everything flowing smoothly.