I had 36 minutes and change from swim start to stand up. Timing mat was right at transition entrance. Swam the buoy line the whole way. Did the whole swim with the same guys in front, back, and on both sides of me. When we started catching previous groups we just swam over, under, around and got right back on the line. No idea who any of these guys were, but I wish I could swim with them in every race I do. I was pretty relaxed on this swim cuz my confidence in open water has been crap lately. When I'm swimming hard I can really feel it in my lats, but not on this swim. Now I've got this under control I think I can really work on reaching and pulling. Even though this was originally planned as my "A" race it turned into a learning race.

Swim harder! Extend and pull some more water. Wanted to go under 35 minutes but like I said given the circumstances I'm really happy with this swim.

Yanked my suit off while still in the water. Seems to come off crazy quick that way. I'll take the extra time on the swim.

Nothing

Coming out of transition and into the first climb I dropped it down onto the little ring. Crested the climb and for some reason I couldn't get it back onto the big ring. It took a couple of minutes to get it back on the big ring after pulling the crap out of the shifter. So this explains my insanely low average cadence for this ride. I was afraid to drop it down onto the little ring and not be able to get it back on the big ring. I didn't panic though. Just ended up really mashing the gears on the climb. This ultimately killed my quads for the run, but more on that later. The part that I'm still a bit angry about is I was going up this hill and I get passed by a guy on a P3C. Right as he passed a marshall pulls up and gives a drafting penalty. We were doing about 12 mph at this point and I'm sitting here pleading with the marshall that I couldn't be drafting uphill at that speed. He says I don't care and tells me to pull over at the next penaly tent. So I pull up to the tent and he's sitting there. Makes me get off my bike and sit there for 4 minutes. 4 FREAKING minutes!!! The whole time I'm sitting there trying to plead my case saying there is no way I was drafting and that the guy was passing me. And all he could say was I didn't drop out of the draft zone quick enough. Either way I caught the guy they said I was drafting on the second loop. I pulled up to him and said they couldn't keep me in the tent forever. He says he couldn't believe I was able to pull back the 4 minutes on him, and then I pulled away. So my time was actually 2:31:37 for an average pace of almost 23mph. Regardless this was probably the most dramatic ride I've had in a race.

EVERYTHING!!!

Nothing exciting to report. Average T2.

Move a little quicker.

This was where everything went horribly awry. Leaving T2 my quads were completely locked up. I stopped running and physically grabbed the muscles and tried to shake them and loosen them up, but they were just locked. It was like I was flexing them. I started running again and thought "There is no way I'm quitting this race". I thought ok I've got decent turn-over I can run a 7 minute mile like this and still have a shot at under 4:45. This lasted till about mile 8 and I just couldn't take it anymore and went into survival/shuffle mode. I resigned myself to finish in under 5 hrs and do whatever it took to make that happen. I did it but just barely.

Once again EVERYTHING!!!

My legs were shot. All I could do was sit. After Meg found me she helped me walk over to the massage tent and the guy was amazed at all the knots in my legs. He said he couldn't believe I ran 13 miles with my legs like that. I told him you really can't call what I did running.


All kinds of stuff.


After everything that happened during this race I'm really happy with the results. I feel like it really pushed me mentally and I didn't let my psyche beat me. It gave me time to reflect and realize how fortunate I am to participate in this sport. I'm lucky to have the support system around me, the health, the time, and financial ability to do the things I love. I'm glad that I can compete at this level in a sport that I've only been involved for a year and a half.