My plan was to take it real easy on the swim and keep the HR low. I started to the far left and breath on the right, so it was very easy to look at other swimmers and swim straight - I probably went at least 400 yards before needing to pick my head up to sight. In general, I think I swam much straighter than usual.

The time was a bit faster than I expected. This always makes me suspicious that the swim course was marked short, but others I talked to assure me this was not the case. I guess not zig-zagging all the time really makes a difference.

About as expected. Not terrible considering there was a wetsuit removal. Plus I still feel the need to squirt water on my feet to get the grass off. One of these days I need to stop doing that if I am going to take this seriously.

Was really happy with the bike leg. Again I was trying to take it easy to save something for the run. This is hard for me - my adrenaline always gets pumping when somebody tries to pass me. But for the most part I kept in reined in, which really helped me later on.

Was really pleased with the time on this - 19.4 mph is much faster than I was going last year. And I hadn't really been focusing on the bike leg in training; I had only been cycling outdoors about four times this year.

I always said I wasn't going to consider buying a tri bike until I got to around 20 mph.... maybe this is going to happen sooner than I thought.... time to start shopping?

Was happy with this. Most of the time was spent going reeeaaalllyyy slowly down that steep hill entering T2. I always feel like I am going to wipe out going down that thing.

I switched to elastic laces this year which saved me at least a few seconds.

Right, so if you're reading this and looking at my splits you're probably thinking that I crapped the bed on the run after a decent swim and bike. But for me this was exactly the run I needed. My previous triathlon run experiences have all been, frankly, horrible: 12-minute miles with lots of walking.

But all the work on the run over the winter really paid off. For the first time ever, I ran every step of the way (and this is a TOUGH course). And I generally didn't feel like I was going to die the whole time. My goal was to keep my run time under an hour, which I made. Amazing to think that just a year ago my standalone 10k time was slower than this on an easier course. This gives me hope that maybe I can figure this running thing out.

I still need to work on running faster - I got passed by about 20 people in my AG on the run, while passing none. And 3 or 4 times I tried to pick up my pace a little, but it was immediately obvious I couldn't without totally spiking my HR. But at least I feel like my running has improved from "embarrassing" to merely "bad".

Massage, lots of chocolate milk (yum)


Just really happy with this performance on the whole. Surprised myself on both swim and bike legs, and did just what I wanted to on the run. My last Olympic tri time was 3:06 (on a shorter and easier course), and my overall goal this time was to get under 3 hours, which I decimated.

Race was perfectly run (as all TriColumbia events seem to be).