Because the fog had been so bad for all the races this weekend and the water was so cold, they had moved the buoys in closer to shore so people could walk if they felt like they needed to. And indeed it was hard to see the buoys sometimes because of the fog. Supposedly they moved the buoys further apart to make up for having moved them in closer to shore, but the swim was obviously way short as I normally can't do an olympic distance swim in that amount of time, let alone a HIM swim. Just guessing on the distance.

Being in the aquabike division, my wave was the very last to take off. I'm a slower swimmer so I figured that would mean I would be alone for much of the swim. Surprisingly though I stayed with the crowd decently well. Among those swimming I did well and was definitely able to catch a number of the people who chose to walk most or all of the swim. I was really surprised at the number of people who decided to walk the entire thing.

No much. I started drifting towards shore for one of the middle buoys because I couldn't see it until I was right on it and I was to the inside of it. But it turns out if I bilateral breath and can sight at least every 9 breaths, I actually swim pretty straight. And even having not been able to see that one at all since the last buoy I wasn't as far off course as I would have thought I would be. I was about 15m to the inside so it wasn't a big deal to get back out and swim around it.

This transition includes a 1:50 run up the beach to the transition area. I had a terrible time getting out of my suit for some reason. Usually it's not problem at all, but I got it down to my knees and it didn't seem to want to go anywhere. Having everything still be half numb probably didn't help.

Not get stuck in my suit.

My coach said "Since this is a race and you don't' have to run after, let's blow the bike out some." This is my version of that. Was at 16.8 at 30 miles and then I went as hard as I could for the last 26 and brought my overall average up to 17.4 by the end. :)

I got on the bike and spun it out for a couple miles in an easy gear. I started to pick it up and stayed solidly in zone 3 for a few miles. Then I encountered a woman from a relay team who kept boxing me in when we would come up on a slower rider and then get in front of me when I went around them so I had to drop out of her draft zone. I knew if I could get away from her I would be able to ride faster so I put it in the big chain ring and started pushing. And then she tried to draft off me for a couple miles, which made me lose what patience for her I had left. I decided I didn't care how it might hurt or what it might do to my race later, I was going to lose her for good. I found a hard gear I knew I could ride for awhile, and road it until she couldn't keep up. I backed off a little after that but decided to go ahead and try to keep the stepped up pace. And I didn't ever let myself get out of the big chain ring, even though I usually don't ride in it.

That's about the time I started my mantra to "ride like you run" which means I just keep pushing no matter how much it hurts. The last 26 miles I went as hard as I could and let it hurt as much as it would. The last couple of miles were excruciating (which may be explained in a minute). By the time I reached transition my legs were toast.

Not much. With IM training I've done almost nothing but soft pedal at a low HR and wasn't even sure if I would know how to ride hard. Since I didn't have to run I decided I would have fun and experiment a little to see where I was with things. This is one of the few times I really had a lot of fun on the bike the entire time, even when it hurt.

I seemingly rode into transition just fine and went and cheered everyone else in, but when I got back to transition I had a flat and a huge gaping hole in one of my tires (like a half inch in diameter size gaping hole, torn through the tread and frayed). Not sure how or where that happened because surely I would have noticed if it had happened while I was riding. However it happened, the whole tire will have to be replaced.


I haven't been training to ride fast, I lack power on the bike in general, and I just need to keep riding and working on getting stronger.


Just as with last year we had a BT dinner the night before and it was a blast to meet people. It also made the race itself fun. This is my second HFP event this year and I haven't been as impressed as I was last year. There are plenty of volunteers and things are together in that way, but the websites aren't as helpful as they could be, the bike course isn't marked quite as well as it could be in a couple places, they don't get the information out as well as they could, and something else just doesn't feel quite as together as I was expecting after my experience last year. Still a great race though.