mass start. pros 5 min ahead. i gues not many people had a plan for this one. i chose to stick with the girl i met the night before. partly because she had a heckload of experience with tris, and not-so-partly because she had a really nice ass.

- take along some warm up jacket that i'm ready to part with (i.e. toss at the gun signal)
- be a bit bolder with aforementioned chick the previous night. there was no sleep anyways.

well, what can i say? this was a run-bike-run. there's not all that much that can go wrong with changing from running shoes into biking shoes and putting on a helmet.

get used to wearing your cycling shoes without socks. if they fit they won't give you blisters, and the omission of the sock change will save you at the very least, say, 30 sec? that little detail might make all the difference if you're aspiring for Kona. haha.

well ok - i'm glad i didn't worry about the details of my transition. since the whole plan went through a major change it would have been for naught. dump shoes and socks, put on other shoes and helmet - off we go.

totally trust the aforementionend chick when she said "just dump your crap in the T and pick it up again when you go through. it's not like a few seconds delay will hurt your 'rank'.
she was (or is) so right. why worry about something that is completely irrelevant to a first timer?

i realize that this won't wont work for everybody. just telling.

this race course was hard as hell, but beautiful. the beauty almost made up for the harshness of the climbs, but not quite. one cool thing though was watching the pros (them being about 10 miles ahead of us) coming down the slopes at about 50 mph and passing pickups. all the while in the aerobars.

like - wow!

i didn't realize you could go that fast on a bike.

make sure that my bike is up to the almost constantaneous shifting in that kind of environment (it wasn't. i'm going to do something about that)

i *tried* to check out the race course ahead of time but i got rained out. if there is a chance to do so, though, i think it would help a lot.

i did train in a very hill environment and i passed a hell of a lot of people going uphills, just staying down and spinning. but they passed me again going downhills. that happenend over and over again.

lesson: downhill speed matters. gotta grow some guts and tri bar confidence. because the real killer is being in the aeros on a road bike transplant and having to switch to the drops to break while navigating some unkonwn turn, know what i mean?

check out the course if you can!

don't really know what those questions mean. i didn't run into anybody, keel over, pick a fight, didn't take off into the wrong direction.

so i guess all was good.

ask aforementioned chick for phone number?

i didn't pass out. that's good enough for me.

they didn't talk baloney when they called this one "the world's hardest triathlon"

now, i've never done a triathon before, but i've done plenty of trail runs, and it's all about keeping your ankles from breaking on trail runs. this one has it all.

wear head protection. definitely wear something on your nogging.

i should have been faster but some part of me gave out. mentally.

on the bright side - the chick who trained me ran alongside me for the second loop (hurrah to Brad for allowing this!) that helped.

a lot.

dunno. i had to sit down and just hyper-ventilated for about 5 min. it was like my body just expected me to provided WAY more oxygen than i could deliver.

best warm down: have a friend around who's done it before.


i think it was my body


well - unless Brad had means to make the weather cooperate I can't think of a way how the race could have been better organized.

except one: he should get pay-per-use refreshemt for the spectators. all the people that came up for my sake complained about the lack of hot-dog-and-soda stands.

yes, this was my first triathlon, but not my first endurance race. in terms of organization and friendliness Tracy & Brad RULE!