I watched the wave go off in front off us and noticed a lot of them started way right of the first bouy which meant they all came together again which looked like quite the scrum. Made sure I was going to sight well and not let that happen to me - I then proceeded to swim right of the first bouy. Not my finest moment, but apart from some bumping and a big crowd it wasn't terrible.

After rounding the second bouy it thinned out, and when we made the turn on the third bouy there was a lot of open water. I sighted for a boat house by the final turn bouy and that worked well and I felt I swam the longest stretch with a pretty good line.

When I started to catch the earlier wave, and then the even earlier wave I was feeling pretty good about my swim. Then two fish from the wave behind me blew past me and reminded me of my MOP status. Nonetheless, this was a really good solid swim for me, and I'm happy with the result.

Nothing.

Long run, about 300M, uphill to transition. Felt things went fairly smoothly, but I wasn't rushing.

Not much, just wanted to get through T1 calmly and not stress myself.

I focused on this race as my A race for the year and put in more riding than ever before. I followed a plan, used my PM, and tried to train on hills to be ready for the race.

Plan was to aim for 195 watts, which is around 78% CP. This should be a solid effort but easily manageable. I tried very hard to spin up the hills since I wanted to keep my VI as low as possible, and I just let people who were killing themselves early or were stronger than me ride away. The goal was to be modest.

Stayed true to the goal and was actually riding a little under in terms of watts, but felt good. Should have actually paid attention to HR as well as I learned after the race that even though power was staying low, HR was in the low 160's. I was expecting low to mid 150's for this effort. Even though HR was a little high, I felt good, but still dialed the effort back even further in the last 30km trying to save energy. Power dropped all the way down into the 160's as I managed the uphills as best as possible, while coasting the downhills.

Finishing the ride I felt good, but also a little disappointed as I had hoped for a better time this year. But I got off the bike looking forward to the run, this is where I expected to run some people down.

Bike Intervals per 10km
1) Watts 189, NP 207, HR 151
2) Watts 197, NP 203, HR 159
3) Watts 194, NP 196, HR 162
4) Watts 182, NP 192, HR 160
5) Watts 189, NP 192, HR 163
6) Watts 184, NP 185, HR 163
7) Watts 178, NP 185, HR 165
8) Watts 180, NP 189, HR 164
9) Watts 162, NP 182, HR 160

Ride totals:
Watts 182, NP 192, HR 161, IF 0.769

I'm not sure how to answer this. I rode more than ever before, totalling just under 4000km this year. I did long rides, those with intensity, etc., but the result I wanted still elluded me. I'm not sure what I can do to further improve for next year.

Not much to say. This was a decent transition and I didn't waste too much time.

Goal was to run a 4:50/kmpace for the first 3km and then drop it into the 4:45 range. First couple of km were a little slow but lots of uphill here so I told myself things were going well. Started to feel a bit tierd over the next couple of km and told myself I was just going through a bit of a bad patch and would recover - didn't happen as things got worse. By km 6 I was reduced to a complete walk, everyone at that point was running and I was walking along with no energy and feeling completely dejected. I honestly thought about quitting. By the time I made it to the next aid station all I could think about was that I was throwing away the last 6 months of training.

That aid station was the first time I ever had Pepsi in a race, and I just thought about how people rave it's a magic elixsor - and it was. Within a minute I was running again, and all of a sudden I was passing people as went up the biggest hill on the course, and then I just kept going. Each aid station I grabbed water, Perform, Pepsi and kept running. Although I felt like I was flying I was really only doing around a 5min pace, but it was better than before.

Unfortunately, it dind't last forever and I likely used up too much of my new found energy too quickly. By the time we hit fairy trail and all the little rollers my legs started to go, and I started to walk intermittently. By km 18 I was done and started to stubme and weave side to side a bit. I walked the last of the uphills until about km 19.5 and then ran the rest of the way including the final hill.

I don't know. This is what I need to figure out and try to understand. I ran a 1:33 HM in May and had every expectation that I could run close to a 1:40 at the end of this race. I wasn't even close.

My wife found me after watching me finish and I lay out in the grass for a bit and tried to stretch, but I was definitely a hurting unit. Standing and walking took soem effort.


I'm not sure. I don't think I got enough calories and that may have hurt me on the run. Ultimately I had 3 gels on the bike + 2 bottles of Perform, and some water. That was not terrible, but not optimal. However, I don't know that that explains why I had a complete meltdown on the run. I paced the bike super conservative, even though the HR was a bit high - likely due to the heat, so I expected to have the legs and energy to run.

I'm not sure...I need to think about this and hopefully get feedback from others about how to better approach this race. This is my second time doing the race, and had an almost identical result - 2 years and thousands more km on the bike, I would have expected better.

All that training, and I didn't have it on the one day it counted. Much to learn still.


Funnily I'm going to say the course was just right for my ability - even though it kicked my a$$. I write this because I feel I can do better than my result showed on the day.