Was very happy with my swim. I did a great job with my pacing and taking it easy out there. I started out breathing every other stroke and then switched to breathing every 4th, then every other stroke. There was one guy in my age group that I stayed with almost the entire time. One the way out, he was just in front of my so I drafted off him for a while which was nice. However, once we got to the last turn, we spread out a bit and went side by side all the way to the finish. I did a great job of being very efficient and trying to get as much glide as possible in. I felt very fresh coming out of the water.

Not too much. I'm still working on getting the breathing every 4th stroke down and hopefully will have the down soon.

Had an excellent T1. I used the wetsuit strippers for the first time and it went really well.
I have some issues with jumping on the bike the last few days, but it went great.

Not much

Got through the really hilly section of the course quite well. I focused on making sure I stayed at or below 300 watts going up the hills. I was passing a lot of people and feeling great. I was averaging about 19.8mph up to that point, which was faster than I was expecting on those hills. Then I was going down the really steep downhill. Once I started to pick up speed I just tucked into the aero position with my head up to keep an eye on the road. However, apparently I didn't do a good enough job because I hit something. I still haven't figured out what is was, but I'm guess it was a small pothole or something. I heard a light "thud" but didn't think too much of it. I continued down the hill doing about 48-49 mph and could hear an odd noise coming from my back wheel, but I figured it was just because I was going so fast. When I started to climb the next hill, I couldn't pedal. When I looked down, I could see that my rear wheel was really rubbing on something. So I jumped off the bike and screwed around with it for a bout 5-10 minutes with a lot of frustration. I had my disc cover on so I couldn't see too much with what was going on with the wheel itself. At this point, a race official came by and I asked him about calling to the service van, but he said he couldn't and didn't expect it to by for quite some time. Wasn't too thrilled with that respond and at that point it really sunk in that I was done for the day. He told me to walk it up the rest of the hill so I did and I tried playing with it some more, but had no luck. There were some spectators at the top of the hill and a few of them let me use their cell phones and one of them lent me a sweatshirt which was great because I was starting to shake quite a bit. I finally got a hold of my parents and my girlfriend (after about 5 calls to each of them) and told them the bad news. The spectators that were helping me offered to bring me and my bike back to transition area and after about 30 minutes at the top of the hill, they drove me to meet up with my parents because it was too difficult to get back to transition. So THANK YOU VERY MUCH to Brian and Peter who were from Syracuse for helping me out. If anyone knows them, please tell them thanks again.

Come to find out, I broke a spoke and bent my rear wheel. :( It could have been a lot worse as I'm sure I'd be laid up in a hospital right now if I had crashed doing almost 50 so I definitely have a lot to be grateful for.

Up to that point, my avg power was 257, which was nearly perfect as I was planning to average 260. I had done a good some of not going too hard on the hills was doing a great job with my pacing.

Not hit something and break a spoke and bend my wheel!

I was obviously quite disappointed, but tried to keep everything in perspective and look at the bright side. Like I mentioned above, it could have been much worse. That's my first and hopefully last DNF. I'm quite confident I was going to PR significantly, but what are you going to do? I'll get em next time!