The swim was really crowded and probably the most jostling I have dealt with so far. I dealt well with the crowd, but I drifted left quite a bit, especially on the way out.

Keep working on straightness and overall speed/strength.

I got stuck behind some slow walking people coming out of the water. Once I got around them, I had a good run in and out of transition.

I was pretty happy with this transition other than the bottle neck in the beginning, but I still need to learn how to start w/shoes already clipped in.

I tried to really push on hills w/out over-doing my HR and I tried to shift quickly to highest gear and pick up speed quickly at the top of the hills. I was more brave on the down-hills here than I was in my training ride on the course.

I need to practice 180 degree turns to be a bit more smooth there and keep building climbing strength.

I racked my bike and got my shoes on pretty quickly, but I started to take off w/out my gel and went back to get it. Probably lost 10 seconds or so on that.

Either take the gel on the bike or remember to grab it! Also, I need to learn to dismount while moving.

I decided to walk the steep hill out of transition but keep going with short quick strides, trying to maintain a consistent level of effort up the long slow hill. I misjudged where I was and walked once too early before starting the second loop and should have kept jogging to the steep one. Didn't loose too much time on that, but it was not part of my plan. I had trouble seeing w/my sunglasses on in the woods, and was worried about my footing as the ground was covered in leaves and the trail was full of turns and hills. I leaned forward on the down-hill segments and felt like my pace was pretty fast there. I had a little bit of a kick left to the finish line.

Keep doing speed work to get more comfortable and efficient at a faster pace.

Walked a little, drank a bottle of water, got dry clothes and towel, showered off by lake and changed, got a bit of banana and ate some trail mix, forgot to stretch.


My swim pace is still my weakest area. I was happy with my improvement on the bike.


Set-up Events always does a good job. It was well organized. I love the shirt that we got for this one! The 3-loop bike course is not ideal since it gets so crowed, but it was doable. The swim and the run courses were great! There was lots of fruit and water available, but I wish they had bagels or something healthier instead of pizza from Domino's.