I had a very nice swim: swam straight and sighted well. One guy from the previous wave was floating on his back and as I passed him he kicked me in the eye! Sheesh. He said sorry so that's nice. Didn't really bother me though and I carried on. I passed a lot of people from the previous wave and went out pretty fast in my wave. I got water in my right goggle from the very beginning but it is what it is. I wasnt about to stop and drain it...things to do ya know. I felt really winded when I got out of the lake, despite not pushing it on the swim. I guess I was going harder than I thought and the water was so warm that it kinda puts you in a different place to nice, cool training swims.

Not much other than swimming more in training. It was a good swim. Just checked my results from 2 years ago and this swim is about the same speed as that. Hmmm, not sure what to make of that.

Solid but not that fast- was tired from the swim.

Not much- went very well.

I couldn't get my HR down for a long time on this ride. I came out of the swim hot and winded and never felt good on the bike. My pace was OK but I was struggling. I only got passed by a couple of guys, played leapfrog with one and passed many. It was fun starting in a later wave so I could actually catch some people on the bike. It was very hot and humid already by the time the bike started so I think the heat played into this a little.

Train more? Not sure I did anything "wrong" on the day- pretty decent ride all things considered. This is the first race ever where my ranking overall on the bike was better than the swim! Run was atrocious though :-)

Methodical transition. No problems. Didn't come flying off the bike but came off pretty fast anyway.

Nothing really. Good, solid T2. Fastest T2 looks to be 25 seconds..this one is not far from that, given that those guys were just flying.

Whew, this was awfully hard in the heat and humidity. I was fighting the urge to stop the entire run and finally got my legs a little on the start of the second loop. We were all suffering a little I think...well, all except that 15 year old who flew by. My ranking overall on this was 64th which is really slow for me. But then again, I had a bad run here last time. I think I just need to work harder on the run. Or harder on the bike so that I can transition better.

Run more in training. Turn on the air conditioning. I don't know really. I ran 23:59 two years ago at this race and was slower this time. It was not a good day for running though, especially since the same time 2 years ago placed me 100+, rather than 64 this time.

Milled about. Took a cool shower in this magic shower tent they had. Drank 3 Diet Cokes and 3 bottles of water and still didn't need to pee. Saw that I had come third in my AG so stuck around for the awards. Then it turns out I came second because the guy who won the AG came in second overall. Fun times. Anyway, got a generic little medal for sticking around. I'm not sure why they bother with that kind of thing. They had me at "you came second in your AG". Overall I came in 27th out of 248 men, so pretty happy with that. As usual though, there are so many things to work on.


Fitness level and heat. And then the heat.


This is one of my favorite races. They put 4 water stations on a 1.5 mile run loop because of the heat! Talk about good planning. Also, it is not even 7pm on Sat and the results are up. My FSSEries sprint race results were posted at noon on the Monday after the race. I am sooo much more impressed with Setup Events than FSSeries. But that is an aside.

The lake is pretty, its not too far from home, the bike is on good roads and challenging enough and the run is, well, it is what it is. I strongly recommend this race. Very well organized and the ladies from the church who help out are awesome- so sweet and chatty and appreciative of us coming out. I had a great time talking to several of them...such nice people. And the guy who did the national anthem on the sax was SO good. It was very moving.

Overall I improved my time, despite the conditions, from 2 years ago by about 2.5 or 3 mins. That's not fantastic but not terrible either. My placing in my age group went from 14 out of 52 to 3 (2) out of 35. From that perspective there has been a solid improvement and I have placed in my AG in my last two races. Its not why I am doing this but fun anyway.

Turns out, the guy who finished ahead of me in my AG beat me by 2 seconds last year at Triangle and by about 3 minutes at Buckner 2 years ago. So his overall position this year stayed the same but mine improved from 2 years ago by about 30 places (from 61 to 27). That's kinda nice.