As last year, I started to the right side of the field, very close to the river bank and I didn't sprint. After a few long and strong strokes I settled into cruise mode and I stayed there for the rest of the swim. I surprisingly passed a lot of people, both from my wave and from prior waves, and many "walkers". Not surprisingly, the fastest way to move in the water is swimming :)

Nothing, I had a very good swim for my standards, and I bested my last year's time by 1 min :)

T1 was decent but not perfect. I wasted a bit of time because I had some issues with my wetsuit, but all considering it was not too bad. The ugly happened a few seconds later: right at the very moment I was jumping on my bike a guy to my right veered into me and made me crash into the spectator fences. Fortunately, thanks to some of the kind spectators, I didn't fall to the ground but I had to stop, take the shoes off the bike put them on and remount the bike. I had a few scratches an my left arm, and left knee, where I crashed into the fence. But when I was putting my left shoe on, I noticed that one of my toes was dripping blood. I said "What the heck, it's just another scratch!", and I mounted on the bike and started pedaling.

Be more aware of the surrounding competitors while running and jumping on the bike.

After 10 minutes on the bike I started feeling some pain coming from my left foot. When I started the ride my feet were still pretty numb, but now there was this kind of pulsating pain radiating from the injured toe. I just hung in there and kept pedaling, hoping for the best...



This time around I thought I was better prepared for this kind of course, but I still kind of sucked. 2:45? Come on, even if I shaved 5 min from last year's time I still can do better than that :)

As soon as I jumped off the bike at the dismount point I felt a wave of pain radiating from my left foot. It was like someone had hit my toe with a sledgehammer. At that point I knew I was in real trouble... When I was putting the socks on, I had a chance to take a look at my busted left toe. It was covered in coagulated blood and it was bluish/purplish in color. It definitely looked like it was broken, but still the pain was bearable. So I abandoned the thought to give up that caressed my mind after jumping off the bike and decided to give it a try. I could still walk in the worst case scenario...

I started running very slowly and the pain was surprisingly dull. So I gradually increased my pace till I hit my cruise speed. At that point the pain was much sharper, but still bearable. However, as the miles were accumulating, things started to deteriorate and I had to gradually slow down.

Despite the pain, I ran just 3 min slower than last year, so I think I could have been much faster hadn't I bust my toe... So what I would do differently next year is to avoid busting my toes :P

I really wanted to warm down a little, but when I crossed the finish line the pain was so intense that I just preferred laying on the grass. I'll definitely warm down next year :)


Busted toe?


This race is simply awesome. What I liked the most are the volunteers. This time I also had the "pleasure" of meeting the volunteers at the medical tent who took care of my toe. Even though the tent was full of people in much worse shape than I was, they still managed to assist me promptly and effectively. I'm so grateful to every single one of them!