Well, maybe my swim time was a bit off. Seeded 97, finished 20th. Passed 4 in the first 50. Then came my nemesis - turns. My last pool swim my turns were awful. I had worked on this a lot and it helped. I did flip turns for the left side, open turns for the right. Much better than Caveman.

Continued passing people each 50. Saw Lee up ahead at 150 and accidently pushed of the wall right into his crotch. Oops. He thanked me by staying right on my feet for the next 100. The last 50 was epic. The lane was triple the width of the others so it was just a mad sprint to the ladder. As usual, I hit the ladder right when someone else did. While he slowly climbed up, I stopped short and jumped out. Only saved me a second or two, but hey, it's a race.

Change my seeding.

Otherwise it was good. Last year I did 6:07. I'll take a 22 second improvement.

One of my better T1s. I was on the far end so had a longer run to the bike. Actually managed to jump on my bike and not rack myself. Not sure where that came from. The hard part was getting clipped in. Need to practice this or practice leaving them on.

Practice

I had a mental checklist of folks to find after the swim so I hammered. Wanted to see if I could catch any of them on the bike or if I had to wait for the run. I ride this course every week so no surprises. Rode it just like a planned. Hard. Cut every corner and stood every hill. This was fun.

Didn't quite catch anybody, but I sure did pass a lot. Got passed by 1 guy. 111. Hmm...gotta find him later. I told myself to relax and keep hammering and I would keep making up ground.

2nd lap I see a bike on the side of the road and it's Eduardo. Not good. He had crashed going around a curve and was in bad shape. Into the neighborhood and I'm passing a lot more people on their first loop. Saw Sean out on his first loop pedaling away. One more hill, turnaround, one more hill, down the hill, S curve, turn, home.

Nothing. I didn't feel great but I was about a minute faster than last year with the same average HR. I'll take that.

Helmet got stuck. For some reason I had trouble unbuckling the chin strap. Ended up just loosening it and yanking it off.

Practice

I wanted to hammer this. Hard. The first mile was a dead sprint up the hill, where I passed Sarah, Jacque, Lorenzo, John, and Russell from the frat. Body was not happy. Felt on the verge of puking the first mile, I knew I was doing something right. Oh look, 111. Passed him up to get my revenge.

2nd mile was slower but decent, didn't pass many folks but I did pass Stacey and joked with her a bit as I went by. Hit the track and felt good. Shady and soft. Passed a few folks on this part. I hate going past the finish line knowing you still have a mile to go. Oh well, suck it.

Uphill for the first half mile hurt, but I knew there was a good payoff the last half mile. Caught Iron Dave at the bottom of the hill with about a 1/4 mile to go. He said mine was the highest number he had seen pass him by far. That was good.

Made the turn for home and could hear the frat yelling for me. Didn't die at the end like last year. I actually had some juice left. Nobody passed me at all, but I passed a ton and I had cracked 20 again. Mission accomplished.

Nothing. Dropped about 45 seconds from last year's run.

Water, water, water, and more water. I was thirsty. Then I got my nasty sweaty top off and got some flip flops waiting for everyone else to finish.

Kept going over to the prelim results and I was 3rd for the longest time. Then the last time I went somebody had jumped up to 2nd, pushing me down to 4th. I was a bit down after that, and since Shan had gotten 4th in her AG, we left before the awards. Guess I should have looked at the dude's splits who came out of nowhere. I would have noticed his amazing 42 mph bike average. Unlike other jokers who put on races in this area, they actually checked the results before announcing him and DQd him for only doing one loop on the bike.

Looking at the results now, I got 3rd by 1 second over the guy in 4th. I guess it's a good thing I didn't wait for the ladder. Ended up dropping over 2 1/2 minutes from last year.


Nothing


2nd year for this race and it rocked again. It's nice to do a race where they care about getting things right.