Much more comfortable swim this time. I started in the first wave, and really did a much better job of staying in my own rhythm. Since my goal for this race was to have a better, more comfortable swim, I accomplished that. The only thing I would do next would be to push it a little more, because I know I can swim it faster, now that I'm more comfortable in the open water swim

Work on speed in the time until my next triathlon.

It is now time for me to get speed laces. A majority of this time was spent tying shoes in prep for the bike/run. Also, I put on a shirt, which took some time (10-15s). I will buy a tri top or maybe a full trisuit for my next race.

Tri suit top vs tri top and speed laces. Both of these will speed me up.

It may be time to ditch the toe clips and get clipless pedals. Also, aerobars may be good as well.

One advantage of toe clips is that I don't have to change shoes. It's literally jump off bike, take off helmet, and go.

If I had a better idea of distance left,I could have kicked up my cadence in the last 1.1 miles more. As it was, I sprinted the last 200m to make up. Still, this is about my average 5k time in a tri.

On the whole,

Walked around a lot, ate a banana.


This is only my 2nd tri, so I'm still on the steep edge of the learning curve. Transitions are getting better, but still not as fast as they could be.
Overall, I am extremely happy with my performance. I crushed my previous sprint time by over 12 minutes, so I am definitely making improvements. I know that future performances will likely not be as drastically improved, but I stilll loved every minute of it.

The only other thing I would do differently would be to really plan my run better. The first mile went well (hill notwithstanding), but I stopped planning my pace, cadence well after that. I should have estimated my position and really cranked up the pace the last 2 miles. I'm sure that I could have run a little faster if I had planned better and pushed it harder.