As has been my experience as last year's races, I got the crap beat out of me at the start. Elbowed, kicked, body slammed, etc. I wish I would have pushed my way closer to the front to start. It took until I rounded the first buoy to feel comfortable in the water at all and to not have people kicking me. After the first buoy, I finally got some clear water and kind of set into a rhythm. I never felt good on this swim though. I really, really, really hate swimming in my wetsuit because I feel so restricted by it. I feel it totally messes up my stroke and I can't feel the water. I'm seriously considering getting a sleeveless wetsuit so my arms and shoulders are not so impeded and so I can feel the water better. As I was swimming the first lap, I kept on thinking that I couldn't believe I had to do another lap! I was definitely not enjoying myself. I tried to draft off some people, but I just can't seem to get the hang of that.

Start closer to the front, get a different wetsuit.

I'm guessing at my transition time, but it seemed like it took forever, so 2 minutes is probably close.

Coming out of the water, I was disoriented and kind of forgot where my towel was. Duh. Normally, when you get out of the water, you start the wetsuit unzip process. Well, I kind of forgot that part, so I didn't start unzipping until I was almost at my towel (granted, the swim exit and my towel were only about 25 feet apart). Duh. As usual, my wetsuit got stuck on my elbows (another argument for a sleeveless). And like the complete idiot I was in this race, I stood there and put on my race belt and hat instead of just grabbing them and running out onto the course. Duh.

Not be an idiot? Get a different wetsuit.

I felt pretty decent on this run. I always hate running on that gravel trail though. It's like two steps forward, one step back. I used the downhill to my advantage as much as possible before the turnaround. Probably about 3 minutes from the turnaround is when the freak storm hit and the wind picked up to what I figured was probably about 30 mph. Unfortunately, it was only a tailwind for those 3 minutes. After the turnaround, it was a brutal headwind. I was scared it was going to start hailing or something. It was literally blowing me off the trail. I know my run time would have been better if I didn't have to fight that wind the whole way back, but I just put my head down (partially to keep my visor from blowing off!) and gutted it out. But I did think to myself that I was happy it waited until after the swim to hit (considering that it blew a bouy to the beach at the end of the pond).

Not much, I guess.

Walked around for a few minutes. By this time, the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees with the storm, so I was freezing. I rinsed out my wetsuit, grabbed my stuff and went to change clothes in the car. Hung out the Mark, Adam, Matt, Ryan, and Julia until I was so cold I couldn't stand it anymore. And of course, Mark managed to win a post race prize drawing. He wins EVERYTHING! And I won nothing, as usual.


I think I'm one of those people who can swim fast in a pool, but I suck in openwater. I need to try a sleeveless wetsuit and see if that helps. The one race I did WITHOUT my wetsuit last year was the one I WON. I think that says a lot right there.


This race is much more organized than last year. I remarked that we must be moving up in the world since we now had chip timing. That was nice, because last year we had to yell out our race number as we came out of the water and they would write down your swim split. Then it would take a week to post the results.