Yet again I put myself into too slow a swim group, but started out second so I was able to pass the first person by the end of the first length... well do that tap on the foot thing and people were pretty good about stopping at the end of the length. I then had clear sailing in front of me up to the 6th length where there were a couple of people who were really struggling. Had to come to a complete stop behind them til the end of the length, then was clear sailing again.

Gonna sound like a broken record here... as with every other race I've done, put myself into a faster swim category!

No idea what any of my transition times actually were as they all just kind of got lumped in somewhere.

It was a fairly long transition between the pool and the bike rack area, so by the time I got to T1, my feet and hands were pretty frozen and numb again, which made me fumble a LOT with getting into my socks and shoes. I also couldn't find my arm warmers last night and made the last minute decision to put on a long sleeved shirt, which was a mistake - I could have done without it.

Go with my game plan and find my damn arm warmers... oh wait - there they are, right where I left them on the kitchen counter. D'OH!

BAH! Again my water bottle holder breaks during the race, but this time not wearing anything to be able to carry it with me in any other way. GRRRR!!!! So I had NO liquid whatsoever for the bike which really, really sucked - but I just kept saying to myself that it was only 10km and to just HTFU. Legs were cold, felt like bricks, and REALLY didn't want to work until the hill, I actually wanted to keep climbing when I hit it cuz my legs were FINALLY starting to warm up.

Road condition was pretty terrible all the way around and on the entire downhill (1200m of downhill into T2) there was construction so it was down to 1 lane that we were supposed to use and hopefully navigate around cars, or at least try not to run into any of them. Wet, wet roads also made the conditions a tad sketchy.

Hmmm... buy a rear water bottle holder thingy, cuz the set-up I have now certainly isn't working!

Hooray for Yankz! God it made T2 soooo much better and faster than my last race, will never, ever go back to actual laces. Took a couple of sips of my Gatorade as I had nothing on the bike and off I went!

Nada, this was pretty smooth!

I really, really enjoyed the fact that it was a trail run, it was great! Got my breathing and running under control much faster than in the last race and got into my pace pretty quickly which was also nice.

Well, I still suck ass at running and I'm slow as molasses in January, so I need to be faster.

Get into dry clothes! Thankfully I put my knapsack with my dry clothes in it back into the car so that it didn't get soaked along with everything else that was outside. Other than that, have a waffle - YUM!


The freezing temps, the pissing down rain, that I keep putting myself in too slow a swim group and the fact that I still suck at running


It was a really fun race to do and the entire proceeds go to charity, so I'll definitely do it again next year! HUGE kudos to the volunteers who also had to stand in the cold, wet, freezing temps as we were racing.

Now, where the hell is the sunshine?!?