Fairly good swim for me. The course was a wee bit long. I started in the second row close to the inside. I had to jostle for my position during the first side of the rectangle course. Once we hit the first turn buoy it cleared out. I was able to draft for a decent amount of the time. I tried to really push it after the final turn for the last 150 yards to shore.

This went as smoothly as possible. It was a long long run from the beach into the TA!

Fairly good bike. Time looks crazy slow but so were everyone's. The beginning and end of the course had all these sharp turns onto and off of bike paths. I was in wave 1 to start the swim. I passed a bunch of women in my AG on the bike. I got passed by one woman who started in the wave after me on the swim. She was riding a tri bike. I tried to keep her in my sight for awhile and was using her as a rabbit. We went around Holy Name Lake and into a head wind and I started to lose her. Kinda wish I had a little more in my legs and I had kept up with her. Oh well. It was a hilly course. I did a good job of hammering the down hills and pushing the uphills just enough to keep up a good cadence but not trash my legs. When I climb now I think of Cantador dancing up the mountains in the tour and it makes it easier. Weird, I know :)

Since my last tri in July my bike volume has been down. I'm sure it affected my ride.

Ha, so for this race I decided to go sockless. I slip my left foot into my shoe and it feels weird, not like there is a stone in there, but weird. So I decide to take the time to take my shoe off and see what is the matter. Take the shoe off, shake it and out comes a nickel! Stupid nickel, how'd that get in my running shoe??? Glad I got it out before the run though, that'd have been annoying!

Whew, this was hard mentally. So I'm in the first wave and had a good bike split. When I get back from the bike there are 5 bikes in the transition area. It was cool to see such an empty transition area but once I got out on the run it was just as EMPTY as the TA. There were two women that were quite far ahead of me that I could only see when the path wasn't curving. Then there was no one behind me. It was hard to stay focused and it was hard to push it. Once I got to the turn around there were a women coming the other way and then once I was about 1 mile from the finish there were TONS of women coming the other way. I started cheering for them (it cheered me up to cheer for them!). I gave some of them high fives and I called out most of their names since our first names were on our numbers. The last 3/4 of a mile was all down hill so I cruised in and finished strong :)

Talk to a few people that I knew. Cheered for Emily and then the two of us got the box lunches and tried to stay in the sunshine to keep warm. We weren't allowed back into the TA until the last biker got back. I was definitely chilly!


I trained hard for my tri back in June, continued training fair consistently for a race in July. Since the race in July my training has been down. I don't think I've gotten slower but definitely haven't improved in fitness. Happy with my overall race. 4th in AG is pretty darn good. Top three in my AG got 1,2,3 over all in the race. Maybe I'll get myself in that mix next year :)


The race was well organized and it was super fun to do a race of all women! The only negatives where the long lines to get your timing chip and body marking done. I think this was more due to the fact that there were tons of beginners and not everyone knew exactly where to go or what to do so they moved slowly through the marking and chip pick up. Not a big deal. I'll be back to do this race again.