I did this run last year in 1:30:xx which was good for me, but the last 3-4 miles were tough b/c I went out too fast (see 2011 rr). My goal was to break 1:30 by improving my pacing this time. I am training for Green Bay Mary in May so I didn't want to over do it in this run yet I wanted to PR to show that I am improving. Started about 10-12 rows back and after the first mile it became apparent that a good number of people should have started farther back or I wasn't close enough to the start. This slowed me down a little for miles 1 and 2, but I thought maybe that would be a good thing by keeping my tendency to go out too fast in check. Felt good up until about mile 5 when I developed a side ache (stich?) It was way too early for one of those, luckily after about a mile it went away. The slight uphill on the trail to the turn around at about mile 7 was aided by a little tailwind. After the turn the slight down hill seemed to be offset by the slight head wind. Any thoughts of feeling pretty fast were erased when I saw the leaders coming back after they had made the turn. Always amazed how fast some of these people are. Tried to take some water or gatorade at just about every station - this was a change from last year when I thought I'd run thru most of them to save time. Got to mile 10 and felt pretty good, last year the wheels were certainly loose, if not off, by this time. Was on the edge for the last 5K or so, but not on the verge of walking like last year. At about mile 10 or 11 I crossed a train track and saw what appeared to be a train coming. It was probably 3-4 minutes away and I thought, wow, this thing is going to hold up a whole bunch of runners. That it did, I heard it took 7-8 minutes to cross, sucked for a lot runners. I really paced this run nicely and was it was good to finish strong this time.

Maybe shave 15 sec. or so off first 2 mile split. It's a fast first 2 miles and it probably wouldn't have hurt me later in the race to start a little faster.

Felt good. Everybody was talking about the train.


Not sure how much faster I can go. This is my second or third year of being pretty serious about triathlons and, last year I saw huge gains. This year the improvement may be there but smaller gains. At age 40 that is not helping either.