What they do is have you self seed on your appox. swim time and they drop a swimmer in every ~ 5 seconds or so...

Once again I started to far back....the way they did it was self seeding- last year I started in the 8:30 group and just got pissed off because of all the swimmers that had estimated their swim time wrong. The same thing happened this year...I knew I was a much stronger swimmer than last year but till seeded myself in the 7:30 group. There were roughly 100 women standing in front of me and as I watched them start swimming a few women around me started to comment that they weren't swimming at 5:30 - 6:30 pace. About this point myself and the two women next to me decided to move up. I'm beyond happy I did this and I still ended up passing 5 people in the swim.

Besides starting up closer nothing I felt great on the swim and held a very consistent pace throughout...which set me up nicely for the bike

I really need to learn how to do flying dismounts....other than that not to bad of a time including the 150-200m run into transition

Also, I'm not sure if they had the racks setup at a lower height because this is a women's only race but I had to literally turn my bike on its side to get it off the rack since my seat and bike are higher and just generally bigger than 99% of other female bikes

Well, I was honestly aiming for 19.5 + on this ride so I have to honestly admit I am somewhat disappointed. On the way out I was avg. roughly 20mph and if I had known at the turnaround we would be going directly into the wind I would have pushed much much harder on the first half...also my computer measured the course long....

Also, coming into T2 there was a cluster of bikes going super slow through this shoot thing they had setup this was about 1/4 a mile long and I basically slowed down to 5 mph

Also, I didn't drink hardly anything on the bike...I had to get out of the drops in order to get my water bottle and drink which resulted in not drinking nearly as much or anything at all

Ride more, IE Speed work & intervals

Get my aero bars and hydration system before the race

Learn and practice how to perform a flying dismount

I was done....my legs were completely fried...at 1 point I just had to tell myself one foot in front of the other...this was a very hard run

Run more...but being that I've only been running for a month or so it wasn't to bad

nothing


Easy....being pregnant for 10 months and not exercising at all, only being 3 months PP


I can't complain...I won my age group and had a faster time slightly than last year....