I can honestly say that all this running on hills during my training these last few months paid off TODAY! I didn't walk it once! (Well, I did take 4-5 steps of a walk once so I wouldn't splash drinking water over me, but it wasn't because of course toughness.)

I actually passed several people, which was kind of cool. There was this one girl JUST ahead of me the last 2 miles. I made it my goal to beat her. The last half mile, I finally passed her and came in before her.

I really wanted to come in under 30 minutes, but given the hilliness of the course, I'm not disappointed at all.

I wore long pants, a shirt and running jacket. I expected I'd take my jacket off and wrap it around my waist, but it kept riding up over my race number so I ended up wrapping it around my neck. (Yeah, I was living in total Dorkville, I know.)

Next time, I would not be such a wuss and just deal with the freeze for a few minutes before the race, because I heated up quite nicely during the race.

With more training this fall and winter, I'm sure I'll be able to better gauge the appropriate attire for the different temperatures.

Ate a banana, drank some Vitamin Water, then ate a granola bar, drank some more Vitamin water, then ate a yummy cinnamon bagel from Panera and then - you guessed it - drank some more Vitamin Water.

I also did some stretching.


I don't do any speed work in my training. Right now my goal is just to conquer the distances.

I had a really hard time keeping my Centerline and my core locked. I was so excited by the race that I lost focus.


I decided to stick around for the awards. I didn't do this at my last 2 tris, but I had nowhere else to be and I was curious if I even placed in my age group.

They announced the overall male finisher and then the overall female finisher. When they got to the age groupers, I was hoping they'd change and do a 3rd, 2nd and 1st place announcement, but they didn't. They were just announcing 1st place. I was a little bummed about that, but I knew I'd just look up the results online later.

When they got to my age group, they announced the male first place winner. Then they announced the female first place winner...by calling MY name!!!!!!!!!

I'm sure I looked a little bewildered as I headed forward with a smile and got my University of Dayton ballcap prize, but I was. I mean I averaged about a 10 minute/mile pace and I was a first place winner? That is soooo cool.

I'll get the total numbers online later, but there were easily 400 people at this race. There were quite a lot of kids from the University there, so my age group may not have been that large, but, hey, I still was the "First Place Female" in my age group.

I've loved my last two tris. I wasn't in them to place, but to finish. But, I gotta tell ya, winning makes the effort oh so very sweet. What a way to finish my 2008 season.

Oh, and, like my first tri, I got assigned race number 1. Once again, I kept getting shout outs. Pretty fun.