I felt like I was swimming really well, but I got tired toward the end and I rarely get tired on the swim. I got off course twice but it didn't seem like it was that bad...so I'm a little perplexed as to why my time sucks so bad. Guess my navigation was worse than I thought. A couple of times I felt like I was the only swimmer in the water, never a good sign! Swimming through seaweed probably didn't help either.

Navigate better. In hindsight, I should have stayed closer to the right string of bouys instead of coming "down the middle". Learn to swim in a straight line.

Coming out of the water I felt really tired and actually walked a little-every race I've done before I've run into T1 from the water. Seeing all of the yellow swim caps further discouraged me. As a result I just felt scrambled in T1-even unracked my bike before I had my helmet and shoes on, so I had to try to balance it all.

Think straight!

The intitial ride out of T1 to the road was through gravel, and not nice crushed gravel either. So I decided to forego putting my shoes on while riding and just put them on in T1.

Initially the course was fine, few small rises but mostly flat. I wasn't at all familiar with it having missed the course talk and never having had a chance to preride it, so I felt very anxious, Contributing to my anxiety was the fact the the road markings were just little orange paper arrows stapled to stakes that were maybe 18" high, so they weren't at all visisble. Still, I was keeping my cadence up and my hr down, I got over my discouragment of a crappy swim and hoped to make up some time on the bike. Up to this point I was averaging ~ 19 mph.

I came to an intersection where the options were to go staight or turn right. An arrow pointed right. (There was no "O" on this or any other arrow I saw). A woman came FROM the right on a bike and said something about she didn't think that was the correct turn. If only I had listened to her....I ended up back in downtown Delevan on HY 50, no signs anywhere. There were other triathletes trying to figure out what the heck happened, it ended up being a pack ride back to bike in. The rest of the pack turned in, but I looked at my computer and saw I was just a little over 14 miles, so I thought maybe I should just do another loop of the sprint course and I kept going. But I got to an intersection where previously there had been cones and a volunteer waving. Now both were gone...I was afraid all the markings would be gone and I'd get hopelessly lost. So I just headed back.

In all the confusion, I didn't drink enough or use my second gel shot....

I heard later that some people went straight up HY 50 for 5 miles, then came back to make it an Olympic distance. I wish that would have occurred to me.

This went smoothly

My lousy performance on the swim and the confusion on the bike really left me feeling like quitting, to be honest. So I had a hard time working myself up to race pace, never really managed to push myself all the way. THEN I started wheezing on t he second lap. Used my inhaleer but my chest stayed tight until the 5th lap, when it finally eased up a little so I tried to pick up my pace. Terry and a couple of other Team Tri World members were cheering me on on every lap, which lifted my spirits considerably. Then Terry and another guy from TTW whose name won't come to me right now actually jogged behind me on the last lap, just chatting it up. Which of course every time I heard thier voices I got pissed and managed to pick up my pace-exactly thier intention :)

Not get discouraged and mentally give up when things get difficult. Not have asthma.

Nothing in particular


Lousy mental attitued. Overall fatigue. I looking over my logs for the week leading up to this race I thought I was resting but I think I still did WAYY too much.


Typical Frank Dobbs race. I should know better than to even bother by now.

He offered a free race to the Oly participants due to the confusion-turns out that 53 people rode a "non-standard bike course" and 31 were counted as having done the "official" bike course. I don't know how they determined who did what, nobody asked me what I did. Anyway, if my schedule allows it I'll take him up on the free race and use it as a training day.