Swim was a bit confusing. We were doing a clockwise route, and the first buoy was basically straight out and we had to keep that on our left, the others we had to keep on our right. Pro Men went at 8, Pro Women at 8:05 or so. All Age group women went at 8:10, Over 40 men went at 8:13ish and Under 40 Men went at 8:16ish. Seriously, can anyone explain to me why the fastest age groups (25-39) always go last? I mean, the women only went 6 minutes ahead of this, so it doesn’t really get them off the course faster. Oh well. My group went off and there were 3-4 fast guys out, I stayed on one guy’s feet, but lost him in the mix when we hit the slower swimmers of the 40+ Men. Before the start I never did see the whole swim course, because it was hidden by trees sticking out on points, but figured I had to swim through everyone, so I would figure it out along the way. Before the first turn buoy on my right I passed a lot of people. By the time I hit the second turn buoy on my right, I was all alone. I could see swimmers out in front of me, but no point on turning the gas on now. Made the final turn buoy and thought to myself, this seems long, hit the beach, looked at my watch. 28:30ish. Hmm, I thought, oh well, time to bike. Come to find out the swim was long. This was confirmed by Jordan Rapp and other pros as all of their swim times were 2 minutes slower than last year. I don’t mind.

Main focus for the bike was to go “easy”. I am not just saying this, but the course is hard (read Jordan Rapp’s blog if you don’t believe me). He compared it to Wildflower and said it was actually probably harder than Wildflower bike course. Within the first 10 miles I swore half my age group passed me. In reality, I it was 5-6 guys, but it seemed like a caravan of 35-39 year old men (Yows knows all about that). At the 11ish mile, starts the major hills/climbs. You can see by the website that the climbs could be 4-5 miles long with 11-12% grades. Switchbacks were a plenty and you felt like you were riding the mountains of the Tour. Elevation isn’t high like Colorado since we basically started at sea level, but the climbs were tough. On Saturday I told Amy that it would take me anywhere from 2:50 to 3:10 to bike this course and I was pretty spot on. The hills got pretty taxing especially from miles 25 on. I was out of gears on a majority of the climbs. The downhills were fast and had 180 degree turns where for cars the warning signs were plenty and said max speed of 10mph. Only other time I have ridden stuff like this was descending Mount Evans in CO. I rode the brakes pretty much on every descent. My max speed was 39 mph on a downhill.
The bike course was scenic, don’t get me wrong, Hugh would have stopped at mile 15 or so and hit a trail or two never to be heard of again. Yows would have peed on every downhill (I know because I did once or twice). Evans would have drove the course on Saturday and flew back home Saturday night. Taylor would have bought a triple crank for the front and a 12-42 for the back.

for this whole race was to hold the run together. I wanted to start out at 7:55-8:00 pace. My Garmin said I was doing just that if not a tad faster. Guys were flying by me and while I felt great running, I didn’t push the pace to try and stay with them. I saw after the race the texts from Taylor saying I was running 7:15 ish for the first 2-3 miles and race site confirmed that, but my Garmin never had me running that fast. My first 3 mile splits were right at the 7:45-7:50 pace, so not sure if their miles were a bit short to start with or what was going on. I felt pretty good for first 3 miles and everything was clicking. Miles 3-8 were pretty much the same. Miles 9-10 were tough, but still clipping along. Mile 13 Kloden came out to run and finish with me. That was the best experience of the day or any race I have done. Little guy ran .1 miles with me, saying “daddy we are running fast, then he said, daddy, I am getting tired”.