I believe my time includes the run up to T1, but it wasn't too far, so I was probably still 29+.

There were big white caps on the water. I was excited, because I like swimming in waves. But then to my surprise the advertised "rectangular" course was actually an out-and-back along the shoreline. That meant we would swim perpendicular to the waves' path the whole time, which was significantly more annoying and difficult than swimming the other way.

Overall my swim was pretty poor. Basically there was a lead pack of 4 or 5 people, and then there was me 100 yards back, and then a big gap behind me. I had a chance to get on some feet that would bring me to the pack, but I didn't recognize that the pack was forming and I didn't aggressively pursue them. Swimming by myself made it hard to navigate with the large waves and the small buoys. Our swim caps were light blue, so that didn't help. Every now and then I could see the splashes of the pack ahead, and without them I would have gone way off course and most likely would have missed the turnaround. It took a while, but I eventually found my groove on the way out, and started to gain on the pack, and made the turn quickly.

The way back was another story. The water became 2 feet deep, and there were people running into me who were off course going the other way. I was in shallow enough water that the waves were breaking and tossing me around, so my groove was gone. I was really mad that they had us swimming an out-and-back and in such shallow water--especially when Lake Geneva is so beautiful and big and wavy today--so I basically gave up on this swim during the second half. I stopped 3 or 4 times to see if this was really happening. Dolphin dived a bit because it was faster, but it was too tiring to be sustained. I passed one guy near the end of the swim--not sure how he had fallen back so far. Maybe he had trouble navigating once he fell off of the pack. I barely made it to the swim exit, because it was not really marked and there were no other swimmers around me.

I needed a better warmup, basically. Then I probably could have gotten into that lead pack and things would be easier.

I had tons of energy to run to T1 since I didn't really expend much on the stupid swim. I was close to the bike exit, by design, so I didn't have far to run before I got rolling.

My T1 was 4th in my age group.

Nothing.

The course was quite challenging, as it just kept going up and up. I was in the small ring for at least 10 miles. It was a windy day too. I partially regretted using a disk, because I had to lug it up all those hills and control it in the wind. I had maybe 5 miles where the gusts were getting me a little.

My goal for power was 215 W, but I did only 200 W. I felt like I was putting out the right amount of power though. My theory is that my worn out bottom bracket is stealing power from me. My powertap measured at the rear hub, so it's possible.

I passed like one person in my age group at the very beginning, and then didn't see any others in my group until about mile 17. A guy with a 25 on his leg went by me pretty fast at that point, so I picked up the pace to pursue him. Since I couldn't even see the leaders in my age group, I couldn't afford to let another person get away. I finally hit my power goal when I was chasing him--going 25-35 mph on some rollers with a tailwind--and I was confident I could keep him close enough to take care of him in the run. But then we suddenly merged with the Sprint triathletes, and I lost my quarry in the crowd. It made me finish stronger, because the only way I could spot him now is if I actually caught him. But I was a bit disappointed.

The end of the bike was an abrupt stop at the bottom of a hill. I did a complete flying dismount in about 10 feet of space, which was pretty ugly but probably a record for me. Basically I slammed on the brakes to avoid dying, and then at 2 mph unstrapped my shoes and hopped off.

I need to memorize some features of the people whom I want to catch, so I can spot them more easily.

I should have worked harder in the beginning of the ride too, probably. By the time I started cranking hard, everyone was, so it didn't make a big difference.

Pretty good transition. It was long because the transition area was huge. I stopped to take a drink of water, which is unusual for me.

My T2 was 3rd in my age group.

This run was reasonably good, but it could have been better because I had something left at the end.

I took off pretty fast, looking for that 25-year-old. The reverse brick effect was typical today: felt great for the first mile, had a second-mile wave of fatigue, then recovered for the rest.

The course was two 5K loops on a shady grassy trail. The surface was nice and level with just a couple muddy spots, so I could go fast. There were lots of turns, but I wasn't fast enough for them to slow me down.

The first three miles were at a pretty even 6:32 pace (6:33, 6:31, 6:32). I caught some people who were over my age group and had passed me on the bike, but I couldn't find the guy I was looking for. When I started the second loop, I could see 200 yards ahead and behind me. Nobody was there. Dang, that means the guy that passed me could bike AND run. Bad luck for me. I decided that he was either gone, or that I passed him and somehow missed him. Either way, with the start of the second loop I merged with people who were on their first loop so there there was no longer any way to track people.

Having given up the hunt, I took the second loop easier. A lot easier, it turns out (e.g., mile 5 was 6:50, mile 6 was 6:40). I should have kept pushing and gone faster. I wanted to break 40 minutes today, and easing off the gas pretty much destroyed that goal. I didn't spot the person I was chasing for the entire second loop, and then I kicked someone down at the end just in case. But, the race was over and I figured that I missed out on an award by a long shot since I was never really in contact with people in my age group.

I was surprised when I saw the posted results to see that I did get 3rd place, and that the 2nd place guy was like 3 minutes ahead of me. No wonder I never saw him. 4th place was the guy that I had been trying to catch. Say what? He posted a 1-hour bike and then ran only 1:09 slower than I did. Ridiculous. So where was he all along? It turns out I beat him out of T2 by 7 seconds. I wonder if he was actually about to catch me at the end, because he told me he accidentally started a third loop and that cost him about a minute. If so, then he was only 10 seconds behind me at the end. I wonder if he could see me. Freaky...

No backing off the pace anymore. In this case I won the race with my transitions (4th and 3rd ranked), and I didn't realize that people could be close behind me. Relaxing off the pace nearly cost me an award.

I jogged a mile or so. Then I went back into Lake Geneva to swim in the waves for about 15 minutes. Jogging was hard because at about mile 5.5 my foot started bleeding! Basically 4-square-inch chunk of skin on my arch was ripped off when I was bombing down a hill, and I knew it when it happened because it hurt like crazy. I was wearing my Zoot flats with no socks. Last year I did a trail run and bled through the left shoe. This year I bled through the right shoe, so at least they match now. Just goes to show that these were meant for the road.


The bike. It was a typical race with a FOP swim, a MOP bike that let people gain on me, and a FOP run to stay out of reach of people that didn't pass on the bike. Today my bike was particularly weak, I think, although my transitions saved me.

So that makes 3 triathlons this year, and 3 awards. So far so good.


Well I'll start with the positive comments.
1) The goody bag is great. Got a transition bag...and some other stuff. No T-shirt, which is fine because I have 50 of them.

2) The run is pretty nice. It's on grassy trails in the shade, and the ground is level, and there are just a couple baby hills. There are lots of turns, but if you're running over 6:15/mile they won't slow you down. The gentleness of the run makes this a good race for strong cyclists.

3) You get a spaghetti dinner the night before and a pancake breakfast after the race, so you get quite a bit for your money.

Okay, now the negative. Many people won't like me saying this, but out of 19 triathlons I have done in the past 4 years, this is the absolute worst. One main reason: the swim was just terrible. The most ill-conceived thing I've ever experienced. They had this great venue of Lake Geneva, and they wasted it by doing an OUT-AND-BACK swim along the shoreline, 30 feet from shore.

1) Out-and-back is stupid and dangerous for swimming. When I was on the return trip, I was continuously run into by people in later waves going outbound. I wasn't even close to the buoy line, but that's what happens when you don't have some spatial separation between swimmers. If anyone thinks mass start swims are scary and/or dangerous, try running straight into another swimmer 10 times at full speed. It sucks.

2) Since we were along the shoreline, the water was literally 2 feet deep for the last 1/3 of a mile. Our hands were hitting the bottom the whole time--I followed a cloud of dirt because the swimmer ahead of me was apparently digging his way through the swim. Also, the shallow water meant that the waves were breaking exactly where we were swimming, so it was very turbulent and annoying. It would be faster to just stand up and run through the water, but it's 1/3 of a mile so that gets tiring quickly.

3) The buoys were the size of beach balls. Maybe smaller. From a distance they were the same size as the swim caps surrounding them. I was particularly annoyed when the orange wave started, because the buoys are orange too! On a lake that has large waves, and also one where swim caps are all over your line of sight because of the stupid out-and-back course, you should have larger buoys. Maybe that's why everyone was off course all the time.

4) The swim exit could not be found. We could not turn around the last buoy properly, because we would have to go over to where the outbound swimmers were going. There is no landmark to show where you should get out of the water, and since it's along the shore the exit could be anywhere. There was a dude holding one of those tiny buoys above his head on shore...that was it.

Seriously, it was a waste of a swim. I stopped many times just out of disbelief that the race directors thought this would be a good idea, especially since they have experience organizing races and they had all of Lake Geneva to work with. I will never come back to this race without a new swim course. This isn't sour grapes either. I was 5th out of the water in the first wave and I got an age group award, so I'm not blaming the swim on a poor performance or anything. It's just a really stupid idea for a swim.

If they insist on swimming parallel to shore, I could live with that. But invest in twice as many buoys--bigger ones--make an actual rectangle so it's not a game of chicken out there, and move the thing 30 more feet out. It would have been easy to make this a reasonable swim, but instead it was just awful. The way it is now they should just make this event a duathlon.