I was in the third wave of the race, behind the elite racers and the 29 & under women. Little did I know that it wasn't just my age group (M30-34) going next, it was all men 30-49. I had positioned myself at the front of what I thought was the 30-34 AG pack for the start before they had announced that all of us were going at once. It seemed like me and everyone else were caught a little off guard by this, but whatever, we'll roll with it. I was just hoping that my positioning on the start line didn't seem too aggressive. I can handle being a FOP swimmer my age group, but I wasn't sure about a group with a span of 20 years.

After a weak verbal "go," we raced into the water and tore into it. I was going full throttle to start off. It was one intense minute of thrashing, arms and bodies colliding, and blurred visions of different colored swim caps. If I was going to race up front I was going to have to earn it. I was swimming so hard it was all I could do to keep people off the top of me. Maybe about 200 yards in I found my breathing to be way too short and shallow. The intense start combined with the cold water was leaving my gasping for air. But at the same time things were starting to thin out up front and I had to mentally tell myself to calm the f down, catch your breath, and settle into a nice stroke pattern.

Eventually I found myself rounding the first left turn and we were hanging tough. About this time I found a guy off to my immediate right going stroke for stroke with me. I don't think we had anyone around us in our immediate surroundings, but for some reason we found it necessary to swim within two inches of each other. Well, we continued this for a good 5-7 minutes until we approached a buoy. This guy on my right was making a bee line for that buoy which was on my right and I more or less stood in his way. By the time we reached that buoy I had to decide to either make him fight for his positioning and crowd him out, or just let him by. I opted for the latter deciding just to ride his toes the rest of the way in. This actually worked out pretty well in the end because I could not for the life of me see the swim exit, all that I could make out were people in front of me angling left towards the shore. Once my fingers hit dirt I stood up and was greeted my nice crowd cheering us up into transition.

I would be little more mentally prepared for the chaos at the start; visualization. Other than that, nothing. This swim went well, good intensity throughout.

We had a longer than I expected jog up through transition, but that worked out alright because it took quite a bit of fumbling around before I could find my pull string for my wetsuit zipper. Wetsuit slid off Ok, then shoes, helmet, glasses, bike and go.

Nothing. Did everything the best way I know how but it's still not fast enough. Had the 81st fastest T1 time.

This was going to be all about being competitive on the bike without pushing the limits of what I'm truly capable of. Today was supposed to be a continuation of yesterday's high winds and temps. Luckily the clouds came out and shielded us from the rays and course set things up so that the headwind came at us while we were going through the neighborhood. As I've pointed out in other races, when you're an FOP swimmer and only an average biker there is little opportunity to pass other bikers but a plethora chances to watch the faster bikers roll on past you. However, I'm ok with this.

I stayed on top of my drink and nutrition. I put down a bottle of Gatorade Endurance and my gel flask mixed with two parts vanilla bean and two parts water with an occasional swig of water. Everything went well for the most part. The hills sucked if you happened to catch a 30mph-ish gust of head wind/cross wind, but boy was the tailwind sweet to start your second lap and to head on home.

I did have one small snafu. While I trudging up the long hill I dropped my chain, which was mostly due to me not paying attention to what I was doing with my gearing. It maybe cost me 30 seconds total, but in the end my hands would just covered in black grease from the chain afterwards. This would come into play later when I would go to wipe sweat off of my face. The race photos might be interesting to see as I ended up having black smudge marks all over my face come the end of the race.

Overall, I'm happy with my performance and was pleased to have averaged over 20mph, but this has to get faster. Save for one person, I'm easily the slowest rider at my overall position in the standings. But improvement will come in time.

Good here, just pay better attention to my gear switching on uphill climbs.

Standard stuff here. Helmet and shoes off, socks and running shoes on. Snapped on race belt and visor as I was running out.

Slide bike shoes off before I approach the dismount line. I've done this before, I'm not sure why I didn't today.

I started off the run not feeling the best. For the first mile or two I was moving at pace that I didn't think I could comfortably maintain without blowing up at the end, but other factors took over that negated that worry. Around mile two my left foot began to fall asleep. This has happened to me a total of three times ever, prior to today. I tried to ignore it for the next mile, but once I started the second loop I had to pull off to the side and massage my foot to try to get rid of this nagging problem. The massaging provided little relief so I tried to get going again, but as I ran my foot had gotten so numb that it felt like I was running with a giant hard ball under the bottom of my foot. I pulled off to the side again, massaged my foot, and then removed the insole of my shoe in hopes of giving my foot more room should a nerve have been getting pinched. I started to run but again this provided no relief. I pulled off to the side again and this time I just removed my entire shoe off and ran with a shoe on my right foot and just my sock on my left. This solved nothing either, if anything I was stepping on rocks but I would never know it because I had no feeling in my foot.

Finally, I reached an aid station around mile 4ish where I slipped on my shoe and started to stumble along worrying if I was causing permanent damage and feeling sorry for my plight. About this time I came up on a guy I had done some track workouts with. After a quick exchange of how each of us was doing I mentioned my foot issue. He basically said in response, "why don't you just hurry up and finish and it won't be a problem anymore." It was so simple but it clicked a light bulb off in my head. HTFU and get to the finish line. I told him to finish strong and I would see him at the finish line, and off I went. Since I was stopping and starting earlier I had now built up a small reserve of energy which was just enough to carry me home at a solid pace. From here on out it all about making up for lost time.

HTFU and get over my numb left foot issue.

Slow walk through the finish line/expo area. Grabbed a bunch of food and chatted with my wife. Conveniently enough, my foot problem vanished and my quads started to really tighten. I had to resist the urge to sit down and instead keep moving.


A few instances of a lack in mental focus and toughness held me back from squeezing as much as I could from this race. Despite anything negative that happened on this race I feel very good about my overall performance. I figure I lost about 4-5 minutes on the run, but when I was actually competing today and my head was in the game I performed as well as I could of expect of myself on this day.


A great race. This was very well run and it seemed like so many of the details that come with a race were being taken care of. Everything from the race packet, to the numerous volunteers all over the course, the aid stations, food, post race medal and towel, etc. was put together very well. The local tri community was out in strong force today.