I was REALLY nervous during the briefing - heart rate was up, kept deep breathing to calm myself down. Once we were allowed into the water I swam way out and waded to the outside in-between people in front. Calmed down significantly. It was ideal setup as I was lined up perfectly at the start for rounding right around the first buoy, and there weren't too many people out there. Start was good, no problems with people, no problems with breathing, no problems with wetsuit. I sighted really well and managed to swim in a nice straight line to each buoy. Couldn't believe how many people were swimming way wide of them. Drafted where I could, but I was swimming more in a straight line than the rest of the pack, and quickly caught up to the previous wave/s. I tangled with crowding around a couple of the later buoys which slowed me down some. I felt this was a fairly strong swim - especially considering the 2000m OWS a couple weeks ago, but I felt sluggish overall - probably from getting <5 hours of sleep. Top 26%... can't complain about that!

Get more sleep, my arms felt completely leaden. I probably need to practice exiting the water a few times after a swim, I felt like a slug running up to T1. Other than that not much... I would like to improve my swim times into the 1:30s, but I need to get more yardage and speed work in my swim workouts for that. I would also like to try a sleeveless wetsuit next time might help with some of the leaden feeling in the arms.

There was a small hill up to the rather long transition area, and my bike was at the far end. I pulled the top half of the wetsuit off while SLOW slug jogging. At my spot the wetsuit came off pretty quickly no snags. Got sunglasses, helmet, socks, and shoes on, dropped some seconds getting tubes/lever/gu into my back pocket which was all twisted up from the swim. Ran out and was on the bike pretty fast, and just took off from there. This transition seemed like an eternity to me... but was 3/15 in my group, i'll take it.

Practice swim/bike bricks more, and exiting while unzipping wetsuit.
Not a huge deal, but consider getting a little bag for the bike - or band the tubes/levers to the seat somehow, tape the gu to the top tube, just so I don't have to think about it.

I am very familiar with the route as it's a major training route for me, so the goal was to go out and hammer the entire ride as much as possible, and try to gain some minutes that I would definitely lose on the run. I stayed aero almost the entire way except when hydrating around mile 9. This was great because I haven't been holding aero comfortably in training rides. I was really pushing it and my quads were feeling it - especially the left leg which has been really tight lately. I was flying past people and hopscotching with a 39 y.o male Agrouper, we kept cheering each other on. Great ride, probably should have eased up a little, but was having a blast. Top 33%... yay! I wanted to avg >17mph, and I killed it!

Maybe not hammered quite as hard. Also look into getting an aero bottle, retrieving bottle from seat tube is awkward from aero.

Got in and racked, got shoes off/on quickly. Then proceeded to start the run still wearing my helmet, fortunately there was a shoot alongside the transition zone at the beginning of the run so I just threw it back in close to my rack.

Was fiddling with too many things at T2. Should have just left the garmin and tubes/levers on the bike. And, not run out of transition with my helmet still on - i thought it was pretty funny tho... Practice rolling dismounts.
4/15, can make up some time here. T2 at last race was much faster, but much shorter transition area as well.

Was feeling tired but pretty good after the bike, and started out well, but about 1 mile in started fading, and left leg was tightening up again. I managed to run the entire distance with 1 <1 minute walk break (which was probably unnecessary). Was being passed constantly and it was getting pretty demoralizing. Kept going, and was absolutely and completely out of gas coming into the finish. I ended up :55 seconds slower than the last 5k - but my garmin also read this as being a 3.3 mile course, so I dunno. Bottom 5%... UGGH.

Not hammer quite so hard on the bike.
LOSE MORE WEIGHT.

Walked around, hydrated, got a small plate of food (yummy strawberry shortcake) and sat in grass and ate and stretched. Walked around for a while, cheered people on that were still finishing, and waited in the eternally long line for results, as I forgot to stop my watch at the end...
Rode back home via Marine Drive and the Max - 9.17 miles very slowly :)


My fat ass. ;)


Overall, and for my 2nd TRI this was a great effort. I've lost just shy of 30 pounds since starting this adventure, and compared to a lot of folks in the race i'm still carrying an asian gymnast extra on my body. So I can't complain about my performance too much...

THE GOODS:

I have never ridden so fast EVER! Wooohooo, the bike seriously rocked!

I swam light years better than I did the last OWS, and there's room for more improvement here which will come with more speed work.

I went all out the entire race and gave it all I could.

I finished another tri! Wooot!

THE BADS:

I can't help being a little disappointed in my running. To be fair to myself - I have never run in my life, and couldn't even run a minute last September when I started training - and in that time have gone from 16+ minute miles to running 3 miles consistently at just under 13 min/mi. I know I will get better the more I run, but to lose 240 places because of it SUCKS! My competitive side is chaffing at the bit. The good thing about being such a bad runner is I'm SUPER MOTIVATED now - to lose 20 more pounds, and to get faster! YAH! ;)