Raining, and really cold water. I took off, with a position to deep side of the lake. First 50 yards or so went well, till I realized I was completely out of breath. Side stroked for a bit, tried swimming again, and 10 strokes later completely out of breath. About this time I took two or three big swallows of water trying to breath, and everything really started to go downhill.

Not have the goggle strap break, which made me do a 200 yard sprint, which kept me from being able to warm up, which caused my heart rate to spike and the wheels to fall off the swimming bus...

It was pouring rain - I had secured all my clothes under a garbage bag, so I had to shuffle to find everything. I was pretty cold at this point, and moving fast just wasn't in the cards. I took my time, tried not to forget anything important, and put dry clothes on, along with arm warmers and a water resistant jacket.

This was OK - no way I could have sped this up, given the amount of clothes I put on.

I was so glad to be out of that damned cold water - the bike was nice change. Even thought it was pouring down rain, at least I had relatively dry clothes. My stomach was pretty messed up from swallowing lake water, so I just sipped a little water from my aero unit. About 5 miles in I choked down a gel - but it was a real struggle to keep it down. Finally about towards the end of the bike my stomach calmed down a bit.

Not much - the bike went pretty well, considering I didn't push hard - the last thing I wanted to do was crash.

Not really too much of a hurry here - I knew I was at the back of the pack, so why bust my butt.....
I took some extra time, put on dry socks, and stripped off some of the extra clothes from the bike.

Not much. Maybe not have shuffled all my clothes around in T-1???

So, I take off up this grassy slope - thinking this is pretty cool - then about 100 feet later we go off-road, onto the trail that they built specifically for this event. This trail, mind you, did not exist a few weeks ago... And it had been raining all morning..... So, a brand new trail, not really well compacted, plus a couple of hours of rain = MUD SHOES!!! Probably had at least an two inches of mud on the bottom of my shoes, for most of the run. Initially I focused on just keeping moving, and not walking.... But then the footing got really slippery, and I walked thru that area, then it went uphill, so I walked thru that, then my motivation pretty much went out the window, so I walked whenever I wanted to. Spent a lot of time scraping my shoes off, trying to get some of the mud off.

Maybe train a little bit? Maybe pick an event that doesn't have rain in the picture??

Walked over to the transition area, packed up my stuff, put on some dry clothes and headed out. My wife and little white dog were there in the rain the whole time, they were drenched, and ready to go. The cutest little boy handed me a water bottle, and asked me for my chip. I took a swig of the bottle and spit it back out - without a doubt, the worst tasting water I have ever tasted!!!

So, I dump it out, my wife takes it over the the "Fluid" booth, fills it up. I take a swig of that, and nearly puke. I've never actually tasted urine, but I'm SURE that "FLUID" is essentially the same thing.


1. Almost no training.
2. Broken goggle strap
3. Rain
4. Rain
5. Rain


Race has lots of potential. The Director did a great job, putting on a safe race in horrible conditions.

By the way, looked at the results today - and they show me as DNF!!! Not quite sure what that is about, I guess that is a perfect way to top off an imperfect race day effort. Sent the Director an email, it will be interesting to see if he can "fix" the results based on my watch times....