I lined myself up in my usual starting spot - up front slightly wide of the buoy line. As we waited for the horn the guys from my age group behind started throwing out encouragement and some motivation and it got me a excited to get going. One of my favorite reasons for participating in endurance sports is for the experience right before the start of an event. There is this excited nervous energy flowing through you and you can feel it buzzing off the others around you. It's unexplainable but it's almost worth signing up for an event just so you can feel that bottled up energy and excitement ready to go off.

The horn sounds and we take off. I get a clean start and breakaway and don't have to worry about doing battle with anyone. I'm glad for this in that it helps to keep my heart rate from going through the roof, but I think it settles me into a too easy of a pace early on. The more I have to race someone right from the start the more it sets the tone for the rest of my swim. Instead of trying to fight off other swimmers I get to do battle with the choppy water. Last year's crazy swim conditions caught me off guard and really bothered me, more than it should have, this time I was going to embrace it all and just ride it out. As I progressed forward I learned my lesson early on that I was asking for trouble if I took a breath into the wind and waves. On one such breath I took a giant gasping gulp of water into mouth. Outside that little hiccup it was pretty much smooth sailing on the swim. Was it wavy and very choppy? Sure, but I wasn't too bothered. From a sighting perspective I performed flawlessly. I passed within feet of each buoy, I tightly rounded the two far reaching ones, I moved around the slower waves with ease, and I never got blown off course - particularly on the way back in. I noticed a lot of swimmers fighting to stay on the left side of the buoys, but for whatever reason it was non issue for me.

I eventually emerged at the swim exit with a 34 min and change swim time. A little disappointing and 5 minutes off from my best time here, but that was with a wetsuit on and much calmer waters.

In hindsight I really wish I had attacked this swim a little harder. Even just pushing it another 3-4 seconds faster per 100 pace would have been doable.

After some poor T1 execution on my part in some past races I feel like I finally had a decent swim to bike transition. Almost perfect really. I actually could've been faster if I didn't get stuck behind a line of other guys jogging their bike out. This was my first race where I slipped my feet into my shoes while on the bike. I didn't do this until I climbed that first immediate hill. It wasn't the most well executed thing but I got the job done.

198/1166
14/141

Plea to have my bike assignment be near the bike exit and not at the other end next to the swim exit.

The first time I rode this course three years ago it ate me alive. I was (and arguably still am) a novice biker. I didn't know how to manage my nutrition, I didn't know what terrain I was going to encounter, or how to handle the wind, and dropping my chain was a matter of when and how many times. When I got done that day I had so much fatigue in my quads that I questioned why I would even choose to race this distance. Today, I'm a bit stronger and I knew that the course fundamentally wasn't going to be problem. I could now ride the course blind and tell you where every little hill is and when and where I need to fuel up. The only X factor was the 20-30 mph wind and the bright blue and hot sunny skies. If I got lucky on anything it was that I had trained on the course twice in the last month or so with similar heat and strong south wind conditions. Although, today's wind was going to be much worse. With that said, just as I did on the swim, I embraced the conditions we had and just dealt with it.

In retrospect, I wish I had something more interesting to comment on other than the weather conditions, but that was the main story for me. If you weren't battling a head wind you fighting the cross wind. Watching myself and other riders in front of me riding at a leaning angle into the wind was quite the sight. If it's any indication of how much better I've gotten at bike handling, I did stay in aero throughout each crosswind decent, with exception to the hill at mile 41ish. That was just too crazy for me. There was one girl I passed on 550 rd, the brutal 4 mile stretch of hills into the gusting wind, and right as I was going by a gust of wind hit us both. She just starts going off and screaming "seriously!" I had to laugh to myself because I had the exact same sentiments. It was just so ridiculously tough at that point. All I could do was tuck my head down low and plug along watching the asphalt slowly go by underneath me.

It was such a sweet moment when I hit the turnaround point at the top of the hill on mile 39ish. Some fast downhill and tailwind. It also signaled that most of the hard part of the bike was over (with exception to the dam hill). Sadly, I didn't really enjoy the tailwind home as much as I would've liked. With the lack of wind gusting against my skin I became keenly aware of how hot I was. I could feel the heat radiating off of me. If only I had a free water bottle to pour over myself. I had no issues getting up the hill at mile 50 and I rode the wind back into transition.

Some random notes thoughts:
Why do race photographers set up camp at the top of hills? There is no way that race photo you got of me is going to look good or make me look cool.

If I had actually hit and killed the bird that nearly flew into me do I have to visit the penalty tent?

I saw a lot more course monitoring by race marshals than I have in the past. Which is good, I suppose. Maybe I'm naive and oblivious, but I rarely encounter or witness blatant drafting in the races I participate in.

I passed two guys pulled over near the church on 550 rd who look like they weren't having good days. When I came back the other direction one had an ambulance the other was under a tree with some locals. Glad to see they got some care.

Nutrition: Two hours of concentrated Infinite on the down tube bottle. Water/watered-down Gatorade in the aero bottle. Two GU gels mixed with water in a gel flask in my back jersey pocket. GU Chomps in a small Bento box.

Nothing. Pleased with what I got - all things considered.

I did a flying dismount off of my bike at probably too fast of a speed and almost lost control of my bike and balance. In the words of one spectator who witnessed this - "nice save!" and I was OK. Solid transition. Pleased with how efficient I was.

137/1166
13/141

Slow down more before jumping off my bike.

Usually I look forward to getting of the bike and running, but I kinda suspected before I even hit T2 that the run today was not going to be a walk in the park (although it technically was, but I'll get to that). The first thing I wanted after exiting T2 was some water to pour over my sizzling skin, but I had to wait until the mile 1 aid station for that. The first two miles I just ran off of what came as comfortable and that produced splits of 7:10 and 7:15. I then hit the porta potties next to asphalt beach confirming that I did indeed take in enough fluid on the bike. The minute I stopped inside I got a little woozy and wobbly, and I could feel my heart beat pounding through the skin of my face. I decided right then that today was not going to be a day of 13.1 mile running heroics. I was having visions of myself falling over and under a shaded tree during the run due to heat stroke. If the run was a 10k I may have done something stupid and went harder.

For the rest of the run I lived aid station to aid station. It was all ice and all water all the time. Ice and water were poured over my head and down my jersey. I held ice cubes in my mouth, I rubbed ice all over my face, and I held ice cubes in my hands while I ran (after recalling some article I read that this help lower body temp, or least gives the perception of a cooling effect; however, my bare hands have a 30 sec limit for holding ice). I could feel the onset of cramps in my legs coming on. I wanted to get some additional electrolytes into my body to help ward this off, but my stomach doesn't usually handle much of anything beyond water on the run. Today was no different. I carry salt tablets for longer distances race for this reason as I can put them down with water. I was carrying my salt stick with me, but I couldn't for the life of me get it to dispense salt tablets. I tried to figure out why, but as is the case with long distance triathlon a person becomes a little more stupid on the run. It should've been easy for me to figure out but it looked like a trigonometry equation at the time and I gave up. At least I had a gel flask to give me a small amount of help.

My run consisted of an unintentional run/walk method in that I ran until I felt my legs about to cramp and then I slowed down and walked for a bit. And this is how things went for the remainder of the run. For whatever reason this near two hour half-marathon went by relatively quickly. Eventually I came to the finishers chute and I had an unannounced lower calf cramp appear. It sucked. But I wasn't about to walk to the finisher line, so I hobble/fake ran as best I could to the finish. It was a hard day but I still enjoyed myself nonetheless.

It sucks that I had to shut things down on the run, but it was probably the right call. I finished extremely dehydrated. Perhaps a little less water over the top of my head and more into my mouth.

My wife greeted me and all I wanted to do was find some shade and collapse. After recounting some of the events I made my way to the food tent. I attacked the oranges and gobbled them up. I ignored the sandwiches (solids of that magnitude didn't sound good yet). Moseyed over to my campsite and sat in my lawn chair for an hour watching the other racers.


My inability to handle the 80-90 heat. There were some hot training days, but not enough. It would've been nice to be able to deal with the heat and churn out a respectable run split. I also think I was lacking a mental intensity for this race. I found myself not being as hyped up and excited to race as I was in prior years. I was very calm throughout, and I think I perform better when I have some nervousness and excitement inside of me for a race.


Great race. Great management, venue, and organization. Outstanding volunteers. There is a reason I keep doing this race. The only odd thing was that on Saturday at 1:00 they were out of men's medium t-shirts. They said they'll mail them to us. Shug. Anyway, I'll be back for this race again.