Water temp felt equal to the air temp as I got in. I know that warm water affects performance but I don't notice. Real swimmers are very sensitive to hot water but I'm not.
My intention in this swim was to go out easy with my 'forever' swim pace and for the most part I did that. My 'forever' pace isn't much slower than my 'race' pace because my form doesn't break down and I stay efficiently streamlined. Whereas in 'race' mode I eventually forget about my form and add drag.
Nonetheless, adding in the inability to see anything, bodily contact with other swimmers, sighting, and rounding buoys and even my 'forever' pace has me getting exerted.
I swam straight. Along the 2nd side of the triangle the buoy was not visible either because it was too far away with no intermediary buoys or because of the rising sun in my eyes. The best I could do was follow the swimmers in the water ahead of me and it seemed to work out fine because eventually I saw the buoy directly in front of me.
On the last side of the triangle there was a guy that I was catching up to in the swim and I drafted him for a few strokes but then broke off as I noticed he was veering away from the buoy. Then soon after he cut back across and into me, then he did it again, then he did it again...then I stopped being polite and kept swimming with my arms intefering with him....I was prepared to retort back if he complained but he never did.

My friend Duane has been doing triathlons with me since I began doing them a number of years back. Starting about 4 years ago he hasn't beaten me in a road triathlon, but I have never beaten him in an off-road triathlon or mtn bike race. Yet my pool times have been better than his for years. I just continuously have horrible swim performances in my races. I didn't know until the race was over, but I did come out of the water ahead of him for the first time ever!


Nothing.

This transition was a super slow one on purpose. With the extreme heat and the off-road aspect I decided that I needed socks, cycling gloves and a camelbak. So I sat down, dried off my feet, pulled on the socks, then the shoes, then the gloves and finally the camelbak just before my helmet. Then as I rode out of transition I cinched up the shoulder straps.
The camelbak had been frozen overnight. By the time I put it on it was all thawed, but still cold. I was able to feel the coolness on my back.

Under the circumstances probably nothing. But I can't help thinking that I'm eventually going to have to do the shoes-on-the-bike thing and sockless if I want to be super competitive in Xterra.

This Spring I have noticed that I've turned in best-ever lap times at my home mtn bike course at times when I'm riding easy. By easy, I only mean aerobically...I would handle the twisty and downhill stuff as fast as I dared but just ease myself up hills.
Why? so much of mtn biking is acting like a slalom skier. There's not much opportunity to put power to the pedals...and if I do, my coordination and balance is affected by oxygen debt and I then end up slower on the technical stuff.
So I decided to try this approach in this Xterra. If it doesn't help me ride faster at least it saves me for the run. And with the heat! Well, that clinched the decision right there.

So I start out at a comfortable training pace on the mtn bike but it's still not comfortable because when transitioning from swim to bike there is always this crazy adjustment period as the legs wake up. However, I did go easy enough that this period was shorter than usual. I quickly began passing people and for the first mile I made a good half dozen passes.
Then the number of passes decrease.
I remember being passed by my friend Dustin who is a pro mtn biker...but at least I beat him out of the water this time. Other than Dustin, there were 2 guys that passed me about the same time at about mile 4.5 of the first lap. First guy passed and I just followed him, determined not to ruin my race by trying to stay with him...as I did guy number 2 passes me and shortly after passes the first guy...It wasn't much longer when the guy I was following (the first passer) almost wiped around a corner. he barely kept the bike upright and stopped upright and sideways. I rode by and figured he'd be coming along for the re-pass soon but he NEVER showed up again.
Now I was following the 2nd passer at about 50 feet back and stayed there with him at that comfortable distance. A mile later as we popped back on to the road to finish lap 1 he went to the wrong side of the cones and was in the wrong traffic lane. When he realized this he slowed to work his way back to the correct side and fell in behind me...I never saw him again.
We don't have splits on the 2 laps, just 1 for the entire ride. But my 2nd lap might have been faster than the first. I was still riding easy, not breathing through my mouth. I would sip from my camelbak periodically to keep hydrated. About halfway through the 2nd lap I began to catch people on their first lap...poor people.

I popped back on the road and finished my 2nd lap. Then began the HOTNESS!

BTW, there was 1 point where for a reason I can't pinpoint that I just rode right in to a tree. Actually my right handgrip hit the tree very hard and I miraculously stayed up and on the trail somehow. Close call, so watch out for those trees!

Through the whole ride I kept watching for Duane. If he had beaten me out of the water then I was hoping to be able to catch him on the mtn bike...but with going easy and knowing that he handles the bike at least as well as I do there was a very likely chance that I'd not see him until the run...

Nothing. This was a perfect ride with not a single screw up, crash, or even a touch down of a foot.

T2 was also slow. For a split second I entertained the thought of pulling off my shoes because they were completely soaked with sweat...But I knew better. Even soaking wet I needed them.

Found it hard to get my shoes on...don't know why.

And someone had racked their bike a foot or so off and were in my place. I had to rack mine in someone else's way and I'm sure that bothered someone.

After getting to this point in the race and with the heat I figured it was best to just start and do at least the first mile at my regular comfortable training pace. It's true that my legs were unfatigued due to my bike tactic but with the heat I needed to be cautious.
As soon as I began I had a side stitch because I had been drinking water on the bike. Haven't had this happen in years, probably because I haven't needed to drink on the bike. But it went away shortly and didn't affect my race...I needed that water!

The run course was 2 laps also. On the first lap I saw no one...which means I didn't pass anyone ahead of me (crap!) nor did anyone pass me. And I didn't WALK! On some of the up hills I kept my EFFORT even and slowed as much as it took. This never quite resulted in a walk, but I was prepared to if the hill's steepness demanded it. (I was actually thinking about our discussion on the mentor thread about this).

I had really been expecting someone to blow up on the run and come back to me...

2nd lap started to get rough. Without speeding up, or slowing down, I began to feel uncomfortable as the heat took it out of me. I passed a lot of people on this lap, but have no way of knowing if any of them were on their 2nd lap or if they were slower bikers on their 1st lap.

I encountered a guy on the side of the trail dressed in a studly looking 1 piece tri suit. So he may have been on the 2nd lap. At first I saw him from behind and it looked like he was relieving himself in the bushes..but then I realized that's not right because you don't need to urinate at this point in a race...never. As I passed him, it occurred to ask him if he was OK to which he answered "I think so" (which for a guy means NO).

About 1/2 mile later I came to a water station and told them to go back and check on this guy. (after the race I saw the EMS guys driving him in to the medical tent).

Even though I was going slow, whenever I caught people I passed them with quite a speed differential. I never lost my ability to move quickly down hills, my legs kept responding well to gravity-assist.

Every water station I took a cup of water and poured it over my head. I had a bandana around my forehead and it soaked up the cool water and helped keep me cool for a while.

By the end I was hurting. it wasn't aerobic suffering just the overall sense of fatigue you feel when you are overheating and your central nervous system is trying to tell you to stop. But I made it across the line and was surprised to see a decent time on the overhead time clock.

By this time I was thinking that I had beat Duane and after finding my daughter she confirmed that he wasn't done yet. I had to wait another 14 minutes before he showed up!!

Nothing.

warm-down is right...it was WARM. I fell to the ground for a few moments, then removed my timing chip. Someone handed me some water. It wasn't long until I had an icy towel on my head and kept drinking and drinking...

About 20 minutes later I headed to the lake and got in to float around for a while. It felt slightly better than being in the air and it got all the mud from my body (dust combined with sweat).

The walking, talking and rehydrated continued for 2 hours while waiting for the awards ceremony.


HEAT!


Note: The guy that beat me in my AG was 2nd overall which technically gave me 1st in the age group, but for the purposes of the race report I pulled him back in.

Also note: overall results have relays in there, I did NOT count them when I put my overall ranks.

Results don't show those that DNFd. Don't know how many that was but total number of racers should actually include DNFs IMO.


And my daughter is now enamored with Xterra. She's wanting to learn to swim and mtn bike so she can do one!