What a fiasco. I'm still not a real good swimmer so I went out very conservatively. They made the race wet suit legal and I don't own a wet suit. We were told to swim to the second bouy and turn left. The first wave was off and 3 min later my wave started. I settled into a nice rythym. When I approached the first bouy I noticed everbody was turning and angling to the 3rd bouy. I continued on to the correct 2nd bouy. By the time I got to the 3rd bouy the last wave of women were catching me. I turned to see all of the women turning at the 1st bouy. I continued swimming at a very consistent pace for the rest of the swim. I saw the race director in a kayak toward the end of the swim and asked him "we were suppose to go to the second bouy right? His reply was "some people don't know how to count." I was out of the swim and felt good. I had to sit down from being dizzy to put on my shoes to run the 1/4 mile to transition.

Swim a little faster. My goal was 30 mins so I missed that by a couple mins. This was by far my best open water swim. This is the 3rd time I have done this race and this was the 3rd different swim course. I think the 1st year the distance was probably correct. Last year it was short and this year it was long.

1/4 mile run from the swim makes the time a little high. I was 1 min faster than last year.

nothing

I picked of a lot of the faster swimmers. I rode the course a couple weeks ago and knew it was faster coming back than it was going out. I got to the turn around in good shape, took a gel and hammered it coming back. Bad thing was we had a 6mph headwind coming back. My goal was 1:15:00 so I beat that and no one passed me.

I thought I had hammered the bike a little to much but I felt good coming into T2.

Smooth transition, took a little long but I decided to take another gel and a drink before the run.

nothing

I started out and felt really good. Legs weren't heavy and heart rate was low. Stopped at all of the water stops and just swished and spit the water only allowing a little to be swallowed. Had a really good pace going for the first 4 miles. Turning to run the trail around the lake it started to get hot. There was no breeze in the trees and the heart rate was starting to get to high. Had to walk a little at mile 5 to let the heart rate come down and then took off again. The last 1/2 mile was mostly uphill and lost some time on a slower pace. I took off again at the .2 sign to the finish.

Not much

Water..cold towel...shower...food


I haven't been running as much as I need to. My legs just haven't recovered from the marathon I ran in April. The new Tri bike is coming along with better positioning. Feeling more comfortable in open water.


Well...we're all standing around waiting for awards and it's announced "if you swam the correct swim course please come to the tent area and sit down.." They ended up giving a 2 min time penalty to the swim cheaters instead of a DQ and they will not use the results for USAT rankings. It was funny listening to people say they weren't sure if they swam the correct course or not. Give me a break!!! They had lots of volunteers on the course and lots of food when we were done. There was 1 biker who crashed and broke his collarbone in 3 places.