Started out bumping into a couple people, but overall not a bad start. Once we hit the first turn, things spread out a bit, and I got into a rhythm. Needed to site better after this, as there were no other swimmers to reference.

Need to work on getting into shoes with wet feet. Didn't dry my feet off in T1, so wet, sandy feet are hard to get into shoes.

Practice getting into shoes

Wow, I don't know what paid off more, the new bike/wheels/helmet, or the off-season workouts. The sum total though is about 3 mph faster than last year.

Wasn't really sure how close I was to T2, so I dismounted with shoes on. Ran to T2 with shoes on, no real issues.

Not much.

Felt pretty spent at run start. Seemed like I should have been running faster, however pace indicated I was not going to go much faster. Data shows heart rate gradually increasing along with pace, with cadence remaining essentially the same. So this suggests strides were getting longer, maybe hips were opening up?

Consider taking longer strides initially, maybe to stretch out.

stretched a bit while waiting for friends. Didn't really feel to tight afterwards.


Getting feet into shoes at beginning of bike; derailleur issues


There wasn't much organization early on. As I understand it, this race started as a HIM, and the sprint was added on later. It clearly felt that way, and since the sprint starts one hour prior to the HIM, we were waiting a bit for things to get organized. There also weren't many mile markers on the run course, as someone else noted, that affected their run effort.

For post-race food, the web site states a "home cooked meal" would be served. They must have been referring to the Half-distance race, since all we had was muffins and croissants, which were good, but there could have been more.
Also, while leaving, there was vehicle traffic mixing with HIM bike traffic. This was not good, though I'm not sure what can be done about it.

We also saw a couple bikers go off-course. Not sure how that happened as there were police at the intersection where they went wrong.