Ok... for normal people, this is SLOW SLOW SLOW... but for me... 50 minutes was my strech time. It was very nice. We got into the water 8 minutes before our wave, and were just hanging out, chatting. The water was PERFECT for wetsuit, about 72 degrees. I put myself at the back of the pack, because I knew that was where I was going to be pretty quickly. Horn went off, and I started the swim, and everything felt really good. Nice easy stroke, bi-lateral breathing. My legs were a little low, since fresh water doesn't provide the same bouyancy as salt water.

Anyway, I was just going at my pace, not looking ahead, because the river is only about 30 yards across. There was another swimmer or possibly two, from my wave hanging off to the side. As another aside, HOW is it possible, when there are only two of us in a 25 yard radius, for us to continuously bump into each other? VERY strange.

The swim upstream seemed like it was taking forever, probably because there was a slight current. The next wave behind me started passing me about 100 yards from the turn around. That wasn't a whole lot of fun, but I didn't get bumped too much.

After the turn around, I started scraping my knuckles on the ground of the river. Me, and the other guy from my wave, decide at the same time to stand up and look for a better channel. So... here we are, in the middle of a race, walking in the river trying to find somewhere we could actually get a real stroke in without scraping our hands.

The swim downstream, with the current was sweet. I don't have a time, but I looked up to see where I was, and saw the bridges about 100 yards in front of me. Next time I looked up, I was ON the finish beach (unfortunatly about 25 yards too far up the beach), but I was moving fast going down stream.

I wasn't pushing this swim. I got out, not breathing hard, and my heart rate didn't feel high. That was the goal, to survive the swim and not kill myself on the part of the race that I couldn't do much about.

Oh... get stronger at swimming. For me, this was just about as good a swim as I was hoping for.

Got to T1, and as the BOPER in the second to last wave, MOST of T1 was already torn down. There were only about 20 bikes left in the whole area. Got my wetsuit off alright, tried to put on my helmet and discovered the straps weren't working anymore. Spend a minute adjusting the STUPID straps. Sigh.

Then struggled with putting on the socks. Finally got them on and was off. Get out of T1 and Yanti is there screaming GO Brian... What a huge pick up. She is as sweet and beautiful in person as she is on line, I couldn't beleive she was still there, since I was very close to one of the last people coming out of T1.

Anyway, the organization of T1 was pretty good. I swam in my tri-shorts and bike shorts so I didn't have to slip on clothes. I managed to find everything I needed without a lot of effort.

Test the helmet before getting in the water, in case it has somehow readjusted itself between testing it the night before.

I'm going to say it was 3 hours :) cause that was my push pace. This is not the official time of 3:09, but hey. They didn't have a split for T2, and T2 was pretty long, with a couple of long runs both in and out of T2... so... dag nab it... I can make up what ever time I want.

The bike felt mostly good, some stupid stuff, but mostly good.

Got out of T1 screaming "This slow stuff stops here" and sure enough, I was passing people pretty quickly. Got into aero position and started crusing down the road. This is the first time I've rode with my Aero Helmet, so I wasn't used to the sounds being strange. About mile 2, I stop, because it started sounding like my wheels were rubbing. No... it was just the HED3s starting to get warmed up. Mile 5, my equipment bottle falls out of the back rack. I NEED to work on that. This is also the first time I rode with the aero bottle, so I hadn't mounted it right, so it's pouring GU2O all over my bento box. Something else to get right next time.

Anyway... stayed in aero for about 10 miles, feeling very good, passing a good number of people. The course was pretty easy rollers, with not much wind, which is perfect for me. About mile 10, though, my back starts to tighten up. So for the rest of the race, I was pretty much just riding upright, still passing people, and feeling pretty good.

Got to the first aid station, grabbed a water, but didn't stop at the porta-potty, even though, in hind sight, it would have been a good idea, but there was a line.

Made the turn onto Canyon, which is a long shallow hill. Had a good idea what to expect thanks to Eric and MadKat's advice the night before, so this wasn't a problem. What was a problem at this point was that I was starting to get distracted by the fact that I hadn't stopped at the last porta-potty. Oh well.

Go to the second aid station... and ... NO LINE!!! Woo woo!!! Got off the bike, did some light stretching, and got into the porta-potty and out. Spent a couple of minutes adjusting my aero-bottle, so that it was actually, you know, aero. Grabbed a Gatoraid and I was off.

Did Chalk hill which was easy enough, but got onto the other side of Chalk Hill, and started feeling really drained. After a while of this, I realized that I was fighting a light headwind for the first time of the day.

Got into Windsor, and did an easy ride through the flat suburban streets. Was going decently fast, but definitly not crunching it.


Need more practice in aero position. Need to figure out how to keep my bottles from slipping out.

Since there is no split in the results, this is what I think it was. Yanti was there cheering us on!!! Got out of T2, asking Yanti where Geoff was... she looks at me strangly, and says "50 yards ahead" He's the next guy in front of me, but this was the first time I had seen him all day.

Got into T2 behind a couple of slower people who were walking down the carpet to T2. The carpet was essentially a single track for about 100 yards. Darn... it was their fault I was walking down this carpet... YEAH... that's it.

Got out of T1, and my back was still stiff. This was distracting. Almost immediatly, I started on a run/walk combination, because I just didn't have the focus to force the run. It was disturbing. At the start of the run, I knew that all I had to do was have a perfect run, and my strech time of 6 hours was acheivable. By the first 1/2 mile, I was just hoping for my goal time of 6:30.

Like I said, a very strange run. I was doing about 1/3 mile run, 1 minute walks, and couldn't force myself to run up any of the rollers. Other than just sheer mental powers, I can't explain why this run was so bad. I wasn't feeling tired, I didn't bonk, I didn't run out of energy, I just didn't have the will power to have a good run.

Anyway, the day was cooler than I expected, which was very nice. The run was gorgeous, as was the rest of the race. I was alternating water and Gatorade for the first 10 miles, with a couple of peices of fruit and Fig Newtons.

Mile 10, I switched to coke to just have the jolt of sugar rush that I needed to have a strong finish. I did have enough energy at the end to sprint the last 1/2 mile, passing about 7 people along the way.

I have mixed feelings about this run. At the time, I thought it was HORRIBLE, worst run EVER. But as I was thinking about it, even during the run, I got about the same time that I did in my first half marathon, only 11 months ago. So... I know I should have done better, but, that seems like a lot of good progress in 11 months.

Hard to say. Needed to be able to focus better to push myself to go at the pace that I knew I can maintain. Probably need more brick runs to get used to the transition, and the change in focuse needed.

Got to the finish line, and my kids were STILL giving out medals. SWEET!!!! Their shift was supposed to end at 2, and I got there about 2:30. That's a way to get around the whole NAS no family rules, have them handing out medals. Ruth put my medal over my head and I was done. Did some walking around, but that was about it for warm down. Grabbed a chicken burger.


Focus on the run, and just being a weak swimmer.