The girl in front of me obviously couldn't estimate her time correctly. That was the biggest p*ss off. I caught up to her at about the 125m mark. I kept tapping her feet to get her to stop at the end of the lane and let me pass which is the etiquette, but she never let me pass. I didn't want to pass using the middle of the lane because you are not supposed to do it (even though people do) and when I was watching some of the earlier heats I saw two people hit arms. So I just hung out behind her and used it as an opportunity to draft which I did. I rated this an average swim because I really wasn't very tired and I know I could have done it faster. Oh and the guy behind me eventually passed both of us going up the middle. I guess I should have taken the chance?

I made sure I was pretty accurate with my swim time going into the swim, but I know most others don't. What can I do about that?

I felt really good after the swim because I drafted almost the whole way, so I'm not sure that I'd do anything differently.

No wetsuit was worn, so it's easy to just take off the cap and googles. This race is structured a bit differently. After you get out of the pool you go into the tent and change. Then you run about 400m to the bike transistion, so this makes it difficult to put your bike shoes on right away since you have to run about 400m. Here was my solution.

In tent, dried my legs a bit and my upper body just a tiny bit. Put towel on the ground and stood on it. Put triathlon shorts on. They were pretty easy to get on. Then put Body Glide on my feets (oh those damn blister), some sports socks and some slip on running shoes. Put the towel, cap and goggles in my wet bag, left it and then jogged to the cycle transition. In cycle transistion, put on my blue long sleeve dry fit shirt and my cycling shoes. Put on my helmet, sun glasses and gloves. Ran with my bike to the line where I was allowed to mount it.

Oh yeah well I was changing in the cycle transistion I even had a chance to take a few sips of water or gatorade. Which was it, I don't remember.

I'm glad that I opened up my cycle shoes and left the clasp of my helmet undone. Smart thinking beforehand. I credit that to leaving plenty of time to set up.

I would try to find better shoes to wear between the swim and run transition. The shoes I wore were a good style, but are at the end of their life and are getting kind of loose, so my run to cycle transition could only be a jog otherwise I felt like I might loose a shoe.

I would like to work on jumping on my bike a bit more quickly. Once on, I didn't have a problem clipping in though I could probably still be faster on that.

Oh and with the good weather I should have only warm my half fingered gloves instead of the full fingered gloves because they are a bit easier to put on. I didn't leave the half fingered gloves in the transistion area though even though I brought them too the race.

I rated it good overall because it was much better than last year's. Also I think it is good to not put my shirt on until cycle transition because then I was dry and the shirt went on much easier. Luckily the weather cooperated, so I wasn't too cold running from the swim transition to the cycle transition and because the weather was so good and I didn't have to put on the leg warmers that I had in cycle transistion.

I rated this course as good because you can see that my overall rank was pretty good 46/180 and I beat last year's time (48:xx). I would hope that I would beat last year's time, but there was a headwind this year.

I think I was only passed twice, both times by guys, and I passed a lot of people. This is how it usually goes with me on the bike.

I saw Heather who cheered me on at the beginning of the second lap and near the end of it, so that was nice.

I took the opporuntity on the uphill, when I was going slower to drink some gatorade. Also I think I had a negative split. It certainly felt faster the second time around and I think my speedo indicated that I went faster uphill the second time.

Oh and my turns weren't good at the turnaround points, but there happened to always be a lot of people in the turns and they were going slow. It's hard to pass in a turn.

Oh yeah and more hill training.

I think I've go the technique of rack the bike by the seat at the beginning of the race and then rack it by the brakes after the cycle because it's quicker.

Not a bad transition I think. My shoes have the elastic laces that you don't have to tie so that makes it nice an easy. My gloves took the longest to get off.

Yeah, I've got to learn the trick of riding on top of the shoes. I've never tried it. It would be great to get out the shoes quicker, but then you actually have to get off your bike at or before the line before transistion, so then what do you do? Run to rack your bike in your socks?

I stopped and then got of my bike. No jumping there.

Again, I should have worn the half fingered gloves because they are easier to get on and off. When I've done this race previously it's been so cold that I've worn my gloves on the run so that is why I wore the full fingered gloves, so I could wear them on the run, but it would have been too hot to wear gloves on the run today.

The run was okay I guess. I'm usually a 10min/mile, 6min/km type of girl which is what it turned out to be. I think I might actually enjoy a longer run though because I don't start to feel warmed up until about 2.5km into the run. This meant that I was definitely able to post a negative split, though I don't have the times.

It was really nice of Clay to show up to cheer me on. He ended up running with me and he's a faster runner than me so it was great to have him beside me and talking to me the whole way. It made it go by a bit faster. I heard his kids are in great runners maybe I should start running with them?

A bit of a booboo at the end and I lost about 25 seconds. I cross the mats and heard the chip beep, so I stopped. I even stopped my watch. Then someone told me to keep running, I'm not done. My chip beeped again I guess about 30 seconds later because the time on my watch was 30 seconds faster than my official time.

I should just keep running until someone is ready to take my chip off. Duh!! I guess I was being a smart a$$.

I don't know if I should push myself harder at the beginning because I want to be in good shape to finish strong. That's something I'll have to experiment with. Either way I could have sprinted faster for the last 250m I think.

And I should definitely drive the run course because it wasn't marked with mile/kilometer markers and that information is useful to me so I know if I can push myself I bit more or not.

Some stretches and lots of eating. :)


My run? Yeah, I need to work on the run. Lots of people passed me on the run.