Water temperature was much lower than last year, which was good. I felt strong on the way out and managed to stay ahead of the masses, so it was smooth sailing for the most part, until I caught up to the previous wave toward the end. After the turn around, the sun is directly in your eyes and you can't see a thing. I've done this swim before, so I expected this phenomenon, and did quite a bit of breaststroke on the way in for sighting purposes.

Could have trained in the pool more... Only been wet 3 or 4 times over the last 2 months...

T1 includes a long run from the lake, up a dirt hill, through a parking lot, to the transition area. T1 was much faster for me than last year, so I'm happy.

I dropped significant time off the same bike course from last year, about 4 minutes I think, so that was good. Lot's of rollers with a few somewhat challenging climbs thrown in; Its a solid bike course. Road conditions were hit or miss, some pretty bad stretches throughout the rural parts of the course. I didn't feel too hot for the first 5 miles or so, but settled in and pushed pretty hard after that. My goal was to average 20mph, and I did that, so I'm happy.

Again, haven't spent much time on the bike lately, but given the training that I have done, I'm satisfied with the result.

This was a fairly solid transition for me. For the first time ever, I actually remembered to just grab my number belt and hat and wait to put them on till I was already running, instead of standing in T2 fumbling with them.

One of these days I'll get up the cajones to go sockless. Other than that, it was good.

No shade on the course. Temp was starting to warm up, but never got unbearable. I had to stop early on to get a pebble out of my shoe. Found out that it was actually inside my sock. So I lost 30-45 seconds sitting on a curb taking off my sock, extracting said pebble, and putting sock and shoe back on. Pretty uneventful run other than that. This was my only sub-par performance of the day. My goal was to go 6:30 miles, which I know I can do (my training has been run-focused lately). I think I wasn't there mentally to push as hard as I could have.

A guy in my age group finished like 8 seconds ahead of me. He was pretty much that far ahead of me the whole last mile... I should have caught him. Like I said, I don't think I was there mentally.

Coke and a smile. Walked around with my 1 year old and talked to some friends. What more can a guy ask for.


Spotty training in the previous months. Better get that under control before my HIM in 9 weeks.