Absolute melee for the first 50 meters or so, then had plenty of room the rest of the way - that was nice. I thought my time would be better, everything felt pretty good, I'm just a little slow at this point I guess.

I'm an idiot. I put my helmet on before putting my shirt on. After trying to squeeze my shirt over the helmet, I ended up having to take it off, put the shirt on, then put the helmet back on. I should have just said screw it and raced without the blasted shirt, but something made me want to wear that thing.

I don't know why this thing is auto-calc'ing me at 18.8 mph but the results site says 19.4mph. Whatever...it felt ok. I feel like I could have gone harder, but the course didn't really allow it - between all the turns, the rough patches of road, the dampness of the road, etc, I felt like I only had a couple decent stretches where I could actually get into aero and ride.

I don't remember anything going awry here. It would have been nice to not have to take the time to put socks on, but in this instance I voted for comfortable feet vs. ~:15 off my T2 time.

Felt some cramping in the first half mile in hammy and calf, was concerned it would get worse, but thankfully, it got better and they went away. Legs felt pretty taxed the whole way, but I knew I'd make 3.1 no problem. The last 3/4 of a mile, I got a really bad stitch right under the middle of my rib cage - that killed any chance of a good kick I would have. It didn't necessarily slow me down, but prevented me from sprinting to the finish and hurt like heck. This is common for me, my stomach holds me back in races all the time - I hate it, I can't figure out how to properly hydrate/fuel without screwing up my stomach. In this case, all I had the whole race was one big mouthful of a water/gatorade mixture on the bike, and it was that gulp that sat in my stomach and caused the stitch - it's like my body doesn't digest or process water/food when I'm racing. Hopefully some day I figure it out - it's not a big deal in sprints, but can be in oly's and will kill any notion I may have of one day doing HIM or IM.

I'm also confused with my time because my Garmin told me I was at about an 8:10 per mile pace the whole race. And it shows the mile splits at like 8:12, 8:10 and 8:08 or something..yet my official results say I was only going 8:37. This is weird, because the 8:10's seemed to be exactly what I was expecting, training at, and felt like I was running - that all seemed to jive. But then I look at the results and see the 8:37, so I'm a little disappointed, and confused by what happened with this.

Good race, especially for the first year. Biggest problem was probably the road that led to the start/finish/transition was a cluster-F, with bikes leaving and coming back on it, and runners doing the same, and nobody really knowing where they were supposed to be.

But overall, it was done well.