Felt much better this year than in 2007. I was calm pretty much the entire way. Did some breast stroke but that was more for sighting purposes, otherwise it was mostly crawl. Some confusion at beginning and I had to sprint briefly to get into a semi clear patch but otherwise I did not feel crowded or panicky. Felt like I warmed up pretty immediately and got into a good rhythm.

I would train more, especially longer distances. It would probably be good if I did some interval training to improve my speed. If I'm going to be really good then I need to practice sighting and swimming in a straight line.

Distance from swim end to transition area was quite long, several hundred yards. I was wearing flip flops and ran some of the way, but certainly this distance caused my T1 time to be much longer than in 2007. I believe my actual transition from swim to bike was OK. I cleaned and dried feet, was fairly quick into the shoes, got on shirt, gloves and helmet. Ate a couple of sport beans and drank some Propel and some water. Had a more difficult time than I remember un-racking my bike.

Run to transition; possibly have different foot gear so I was more confident of my footing. Figure out the best way to rack and un-rack the bike. It got a little stuck on the way out.

I'm surprised by the pace, I thought I was going more like 18 mph according to my bike computer. I felt like I could have pushed it a bit more, possibly up to 21.5 mph.

More bike training, especially hills

Fairly straight forward. The end of the bike was short and sharp. Stop and then hard left into the transition area. Not as easy as I remember last year. I found the bike racks harder to use this year and was't able to put the bike back quite right. Ate sport beans, Propel and water.

Think about racking.

Felt very slow to me; I'm surprised by the recorded pace. I didn't feel that I warmed up to the run until about mile 2, at which point I got into somewhat of a rhythm and was able to speed up some. Took water twice and walked 5 or 10 steps while drinking, otherwise I ran the entire way. Knee bothered me but did not hurt in a disturbing way and became less bothersome by the end.

If I'm going to do triathlons with runs I need to strengthen my knee especially and I need to run more in training. I did very little running due to my knee.

Some stretching, not much


Not enough training, took too long in transition (T1), and weak right knee.