Aweful swim time.

Southerly current. Tide was up. It was a bit choppy leading to longer overall swim times than last year.

The water was very comfortable.





Swim more than 1k yards in the last 6 weeks. My pool was closed for all of April making it tough to get in the swim time.

The run up the hill from the beach to T1 is always painful. It felt just as bad this year as years past.

Had a great spot in transition.

Wore my race belt and HR monitor under the wetsuit for the first time, which worked out fine. Will continue to do this in the future to save a few seconds.



Not much. Maybe not race with so many excess lbs.

This was my first race with the spiffy new power meter. Having done a FTP test (287 watts) earlier, the book says I should try to hold about that power level for this distance.

I ended up averaging only 268 watts. Boo. I guess that's training fatigue for you.

It was cool, though, getting to see various points in the bike where you start getting lazy and power drops. I think this helped me try to push harder throughout the race leading to a minute better bike leg than last year.

This was also my first race after getting a thorough bike fit. My position was dropped quite significantly from Oceanside, while seat position was raised. It felt really good both from an aero perspective as well as from a power perspective. Thank you Cody from Holland Cycles.

With my bike fitness just getting back to where it was last year, I think this also contributed to the improved bike split. I also rode some deeper dish wheels than last year (66mm vs. 30mm).

Rest... according to the bike power calculator, if I maintained my FTP, I could have taken another minute off the bike split. Hard to believe.

A little bunching up at the dismount area, nothing major.

Not too much to say here. I just wanted to do better than last year and was able to take about a minute off.

Leg felt pretty dead throughout which was expected.

My warm up felt sluggish. The initial run start was the same. Was only able to accelerate up to speed on the flats and the slight downhills.

Slowed a lot on the small uphills.

Recovery and speed work.

Considering all my run miles lately have been long and slow, I was happy to still be able to pull off a somewhat descent run.

Had a few brownies, oranges, and bananas. Sat down and listened to the band play.


Maybe one day, I'll be able to higher prioritize this race. It just hasn't worked out due to other races on the schedule. Training through this week simply left me quite fatigued going into it. Lack of swim training was also a factor.