I was the first off in my lane, but obviously the slowest. Everyone overtook me in the first 2 lengths, which left me to just get on and swim at my own pace, which was nice. Everyone else in my lane was out of the water 2 lengths ahead of me.

Pleased with the time for this. Took 54sec off my time from last year.

Put in a slower swim time when I enter. Or else tell them to move me into a different wave...

I felt like I was fumbling a bit in transition, but the time suggests otherwise. I put on a bike top, which I haven't done before, but had thoroughly talced inside the sleeves and it slid right on.

Was the last out of transition from my wave.

Nothing.

Pushed fairly hard on the bike, and managed to maintain a pretty good pace. The downhill didn't feel anything like as scary as I remember from last year, and the uphill was also not as hard as I remember.

I made it to the 2nd loop before anyone passed me from the final wave, but then they gradually all went past. I overtook one girl, so I was 2nd last into T2.

Nothing. Really pleased with how I paced it. Worked hard, but left myself with something for the run. Improved on last year's time by about 1m20s.

The person next to me in transition had racked their bike right on top of my stuff, leaving no space for my bike. I took the aggressive approach and just rammed it out of the way as I was racking my bike. Fumbled with my Garmin, which slowed me down more than I'd hoped.

Change around my Garmin mount so that it's easier to take off the bike.

Came out of transition and pushed hard. I got passed by loads of people, but it was hard to tell who was on which lap. At some point the last girl passed me, so on the last lap I was the last person, but the woman in front of me was only about 30sec ahead, so I just kept pushing to try not to lose her. I was last over the line, but by much less margin than I expected, and all my friends had waited to cheer me in, so that was really nice.

My Garmin freaked out as I was leaving transition and lapped a whole bunch of times. I pressed a load of buttons to try to sort it out and accidentally stopped the timing. I realised just as I was finishing the first lap, so re-started it, but the data is a mess because it thinks I ran 20+ miles!

Can't really compare the times from last year because they extended the run route, but my average pace was about 10sec/mile faster, so another improvement.

Nothing. I pushed hard all the way round the run. Legs felt horrible for the first lap, and then just felt tired and heavy for the rest, but over such a short distance it was easy to keep pushing.

I'd handed Kevin my bike top part way round the run because I got really hot. He gave it back and told me to put it on as soon as I finished. It was a very good move because it was really cold standing around. I had some orange quarters and a banana as well as some water at the finish.


Strength. I always feel like my legs give up on me well before I reach the limit of my fitness.


This was the first race we did last year. I really enjoyed it, especially as the volunteers were really friendly and helpful. This year I knew about 8 of the volunteers because they'd been on my coaching course. So that was quite nice. It gave me someone to talk to while i was waiting for my ridiculous start time.