I seeded myself in the second row of a very large wave. The woman in front of me took off and I followed behind her, finding some open water fairly quickly. I put my head down for the first leg out to the buoy, then started breathing every stroke to the right. I was really doing well staying on course for this, and felt fairly good. About 2/3 of the way, it felt like my wetsuit came unzipped. I made a mental note of it, and then moved on. I easily could have gotten hung up on that, but I just didn't let it bother me.

I played a little bit of bumper swim with the woman with the pink cap. I should have avoided her a bit better, perhaps.

This was actually a bit slow for me, I think. I had a hard time finding the zipper string, though I had it before I made it back to transition. Some other women had a stupid foot bath, which she was moving into my transition area as I was coming up to it. (I was on the end.) WTF? If you're going to have one of those, you should at least keep it in your own space. But, whatever.

Not sure why it felt slow...Meh.

Once again, lots of people passed me on the bike. Harumph. I know, I know, I'm not spending enough time in the saddle. The hills (all 2 or 3 of them) seemed especially hard. I think that's not being used to the gearing on the new bike. So, I definitely need to hit some hills on the javelin, eh?

Oh, and it really peeves me when people pass you as close as humanly possible on a super wide country road, and don't even bother to call on your left. I almost wanted to take a few of them out. Idiots.

I didn't have a bike computer for this race. But, I did look at my watch at about 55 minutes in, and thought, "well, I'm definitely not breaking 1:30 this time." Tee hee.



Spend more time in the saddle. Oh, and adjust my seat so it hurts my girl parts less. Ouch.

Okay, and here's the bit about falling down. I was riding my new tri bike, right? And, I've only done about 5 rides on it. So, I'm not super comfy yet. Normally, coming up to t2, I'd take my feet out of the shoes and ride on top of my shoes. Well, I thought I'd be safer not fiddling with that. So, I come up to the dismount line, both feet unclipped, and I swing my right leg over, putting some pressure on my left foot to steady myself as I jump off. You see where this is going, right? My left shoe got hung up in my left pedal. It didn't clip in, just got hung up, So, my right leg is on the ground on the left side of the bike, and my left leg is attached to my still moving bike. Guess where my butt went? Yep, on the ground. Of course, I'm right in front of the spectators, so I hear the collective "oooooo!" from the crowd as the dismount volunteer runs up to me to see if I'm okay. By then, I'm already jumping back up proclaiming, "I'm fine! I'm fine!" and running off. Sheesh. Klutz.

I managed to run in and did fairly well with this transition, considering. I had put my shoes and socks in a bag, cause it was still threatening rain. So, that slowed me down a tad.

Um, not fall off?

Holy smoking run for me. At the end, another woman came up to me and thanked me for being her pacer. She said she followed me the whole way and just kept telling herself - "keep up with her. keep up with her." I told her that I kept looking for a pacer and didn't find one. She said, "it was you today!" That made me feel good. That's the second race in a row where someone else has paced off of me. That never would have happened a year ago. Wow, my running has come a long way.

I could have kicked harder. A girl passed me in the last 100m, and I looked at her leg, realized she was from the wave behind me, and let her go. Argh. Normally, I wouldn't have let her kick past me no matter what. But, I didn't have much left. I half-heartedly tried to hang with her. But, I could have pushed harder.

Aaron and Soren found me right away, so we chatted and walked around and drank water, then got some food, which the boys ate most of, and waited for them to post results.


I don't know if my "it'll be what it'll be" attitude was a help or a hindrance. I'm pretty sure I could have pushed faster on the bike had my legs felt fresher. But, this was still fairly speedy for me. Overall, it was probably my best race so far, although Lake Mills _felt_ better than this one. Crazy.