Curioius about the actual distance, plus I want to see the final results to see how my swim ranked in the overall, but it was pretty cool to get out past the pack after the first turn. I did notice that someone was blazingly fast to the first buoey and figured that Dominick did actually show up as there aren't many people in xterra who can swim like that. Nobody worth drafting off of this race so I swam alone and ended up passing a lot of people from the waves in front of me. I felt very good and comfortable/relaxed during this swim and ready for the hard bike.

Not much, seeing the file from my 310xt, my HR when I exit the water is in the mid-high 150's, only about 10 beats away from the efforts that used to blow me up.

I'm used to a longer run to transition, so getting my socks on my really wet feet was a bit harder than I was used to. I also took the extra time to put my glove on in transition instead of the course as I had noticed that there was almost no real road warm up, it went right in to singletrack.

get socks/shoes on faster

Rode this course pretty tentatively as my goal was to not blow up and to keep the rubber side down. I misjudged some of the climbs based on the map I read so I didn't go hard enough on the climb to the park entrance, and then went too tentatively after crossing the road as I thought the first tough climb was always going to be right around the corner.

I missed a turn late in the race, luckily someone who wasn't affiliated with the race told me I was going the wrong way and I only lost a few seconds plus the time to get back up to speed. Guy behind me was gracious enough to let me enter the single track before him.

Pre-ride the course.. plan a trip down there next year as I also don't like the idea of pre-riding the day before the race.

Chip time got screwey here and said my T2 was 1:00, but of the three of us who hit T2 at the same time, I was the first out so I'm using the time from my garmin.

Remember how to get to my place, I didn't practice it during my race prep and I didn't find my spot as quickly as I should have.

Judging by how I felt on the run compared to the HR numbers, I paced this one right. Not sure how I thought I could run 7's here.. 7's on the trail is blazing fast, so I guess I wasn't expecting the run to be this hard.

Nothing.

Not knowing the bike course, probably left a good 3+ minutes out there because of it. Don't know how much of my run would have suffered as a result, but I'll still take it as I wasn't about to leave my wife all alone while I pre-rode the course the day before the race.