Worst.OWS.Ever.
I started on the beach standing directly behind tebeal, and ran all the way to the 'start swim' buoy while most everyone else dove early. Lenses stayed clear, but breathing was hard from the sinus/lung bug of the last two weeks. Sighting was decent, except for when I looked, the bumped a guy on my right and adjusted slightly...~20 strokes later, my arm snagged a rope, and when I lifted my head the 1st buoy was on top of it. Doh!
I had Tom in sight (the red wet-suit trim was easy to see) around the 1st buoy, but didn't hang with my wave leaders over the rest of the swim. I'd say I'm not sure where the swim mojo went, but I know better.
Admittedly my swim effort has dropped off significantly the last month, and 2 minutes is the price I paid over last year. This was a big letdown for what was otherwise a good race for me.

Keep up the maintenance swimming effort, or not schedule something within a month of an A race.

Maybe it was the long-azz run up to transition, but this felt very disorganized and sloppy. julta was counting off athletes entering transition, so I said hi on my way by.
I used my dry shirt to wipe my face (forgot a small sweat towel), decided at the last minute to skip the socks I had planned to wear, even took a moment to rescue someone's errant sunglasses from the path to Bike Out

Not have socks to get out of the way.
Um, not sure what else since this was a little quicker than I thought.

In the first couple of miles I was passed by 365, and decided to see if I could hang with him, which I was able to. At the first hill I stood up, caught and passed him, which he reversed on the next down hill. The cat and mouse act continued through the course, and we talked back and forth for the last 3rd of the ride.

nothing other than not ignore the bike for a month

As I was racking my bike I heard KeriF heckling from the fence, that made me laugh! Didn't notice I was in and out in decent time, forgot to say hey to julta at run out but I heard her give a shout as I hit the road.

Heading out onto the nice flattish run course, my calves were both tight - no surprise, they'd been tight all week. If I cramped I'd deal with it then, meantime just pushed the pace as best I could. Only a handful passed me on the course, two from my age group (2 on the bike as well). This was the first time I've felt really good on a tri run aside from the calves, and it turned out to be one of my better 5k efforts so no complaints there.

lots more leg stretching.

Drained the water handed to me in the chute, had lung spasms for a good ten minutes, and the got changed and caught up with a few different people. Changed into dry clothes, then had a plate of BBQ. Packed up transition and loaded the car, then came back for awards and raffle. Alas, I did not win the pricey wheels again this year.


post A race workout let-down. That's two years in a row, I wonder if I learned something there...


This is a fun fast race course, hopefully State Parks will eventually scrape up some money to fix the roads.