For whatever reason, I felt like my chest was being squeezed. I felt like I could not catch my breath. A key qualifier is that while I've been in open water a couple of time, I didn't really "train" in it. That's a failure on my part.

It's hard to get a sense for my ranking as my T1 shows 31+ min with no swim time. I timed my swim myself at 29:02, which I was pretty happy with for my first tri.

Train more in open water. The problem here was that it was near impossible to get into open water with this being one of the first tris of the season.

Having not really practiced getting on and slipping my feet in the shoes, I found that my shoes basically "closed up" when I put my feet on top of them.

I applied copious amounts of Suit Juice to the inside of my wetsuit the night before and am going to do that from now on. It was a breeze.

Practice geting my shoes on more.

Did the "sock condom" setup before I came to the race so this went pretty well.

Didn't like the fact that I was warned about the dismount line within about 10 yds. Wasn't enough time to get my feet out of my shoes.

This "felt" longer than 6.2, but I'm happy with the result. I should be more consistent with my training though.

Some very light stretching, beer, gatorade, Athlete's Honey Milk (good stuff!) and an italian sausage. And I was super full after that.


Inconsistent training.