This could have gone better. I haven't swam open water since Timberman, so my navigation group swimming difficulties are totally of my own making. Wasn't thinking about form much. I think I could have shaved a minute off this time if I had really pushed myself and executed effectively. I need to practice open water, especially dealing with wind and waves. That really threw me. Fun swim, though.

Practice open water!

I took some extra time to put on socks, in the hopes that my feet wouldn't turn into meat popsicles this year. But since I was also using toe covers on my shoes, it's hard to know which one made the difference. It's unclear if it's worth the extra time

Practice transitions

With really high winds all day, and very, very strong gusts, I wanted to hold back in the beginning to leave something in the tank for dealing with wind + climbing later in the race. This may have been a mistake, since the wind didn't effect my output but rather my bike handling ability. I could have easily shaved a minute off my time just by pushing the early miles. This was also my first race (and second ride ever) on some old Zipp 440s that I dragged out of storage this year. I don't know if the wind would have been as bad on regular hoops.

I think spending some time doing short threshold intervals on the bike (like I do in run training) would really help my riding.

Slow dismount. I need to practice the rolling dismount, so I didn't want to try it for the first time in a race.

Practice flying dismount.

A PR! I've never broken the 7-minute barrier before, so this was super cool. It just goes to show that if I could bring what I'm learning about run training to my bike training, I could make some major progress there, too.

Nothing. I'm going to spend some time enjoying this milestone and save for my "analysis" for another day.

Asthma kicked in during the run. I think it happens during these cool-weather events. I had major trouble breathing after crossing the finish line, so I borrowed my wife's inhaler.


I think I need to practice some tri-specific fundamentals (transitions, open water swimming), and I need to spend some time bringing the lessons of my run training to bear on my bike training. "Just riding" has some merit, but it's probably not the most effecient use of my time.