Seriously?!? Seriously 59 out of 61!!! WTF?!? I NEVER swim this slow! I don't know what happened because it felt okay but I was playing around with my stroke during the swim.. doing what "felt" faster.. which I guess was a bad idea.

Everything! I need to do drills and swim more. Lots, and lots, and lots of drill and figure out what the heck is wrong with my stroke. I have the build of a swimmer so I should be faster in the water. Again, just embarrassing swim time! The worst part is I *thought* it was going well. Last year's time was 39:06... 2:

Mastered the get-on-and-pedal-then-worry-about-clipping-in. Left the brain out of it and just when through the motions trusting that I had everything. 16/61

I wanted to break 20 on this bike and I just hit it. I have to admit that having race wheels on the new Felt and having logged a lot of bike miles so far this year, I thought my time would be faster than this. I spent the first 5-10 miles freaking out that I wasn't going to make the swim cut-off at IM Kentucky in August after seeing this race's swim time, then told myself to let it go and race. Held 21-22 with the wind and 18-19 into the wind. Barely deserve to be racing on race wheels...

Nutrition - 2 bottles of accelerade w/2 scoops powder and 2 endurolytes. Grabbed water at every bottle stop, chugged some, squirted some on my head, and kept going.

More quality miles.. if you want to race fast on the bike, you have to train fast. So, push harder on training rides and do more long flat tempo rides leading up to this race.

Bike shoes off, socks and running shoes on, hat on, and go. Not too speedy (I wasn't running in these transitions) 20/61

Probably start running through transition.

This was insanely hot. During my entire run, the heat index was 105. It was all I could do to keep running. First mile was 8:48 (oops!) then I settled into a 10 minute mile pace. I had one of those endurolyte squisshy things up my shorts and ended up taking about 8-10 of them during the run. Walked through every aid station, grabbing gatorade, water, ice, drinking, pouring ice water in under my hat, then ran to the next aid station. It really was about going aid station to aid station and just not giving up.

My HR average was actually pretty low which makes me wonder if I really gave it my all...

Unfortunately, I had to get out of there as soon as possible. I hung out with Shane at the finish for a while and hit up the FeXY tent saying hi to all my soon-to-be teammates :) Then I had to hit the road (see next section).


It probably didn't help knowing that I was going to be driving 5 hours up to PA after this race for a software deployment early Monday morning. I really couldn't "die" out there on the course because I had lots of driving and work responsibilities and pressures coming up.

The weekend was enjoyable though; seeing all my friends out there on the course, sitting around the "campfire" drinking gatorade and water on the school grounds the night before the race. Good times!