After I came out of the water from warming up, they announced that they were cutting the swim in half because the conditions were too rough. I started out way at the back of the pack and took it easy out to the first buoy. I kept my head out of the water as usual. Once I made the turn, the waves got quite a bit more challenging. I stayed kind of outside to avoid contact and did reasonably well for the second part of the triangle. After rounding the second buoy, things got shaky. It took me a while to realize that I was getting driven down the beach away from the buoys. The waves were such that I just wasn't seeing the other swimmers. I used quite a bit of energy fighting my way back towards the buoy line and into the shore. The time is a swag based on my bike start time. The swim and my transitions seemed really long to me, so I am wondering if they actually started the race 5 or 10 minutes earlier....but swags for now.

Pay more attention to the pack when rounding the buoys. I was actually doing quite well until that last turn. Argh!

I took my time, partly to let my heart rate come down a bit. Wetsuit came off no problem. I did have to pull my shoes/socks out of the plastic bag, but that probably did not take much. I put my Garmin on as I was running out of transition.

I tried to relax on the 1.5k run, but think I still held a reasonable pace. My Garmin still had not synced by the time I got to the bike racks. My swag on the run is 8 minutes, but it may have been a little faster. I probably got through the T2 in about 1-1.5 minutes. I did take a little extra time to put my run stuff back into a plastic bag so that it would not be completely soaked by the time I was done.

I could have moved a little faster through the transitions, but it felt right not to push it.

I took it reasonably easy for the first 2 km knowing that the climbs were coming. The rain was medium hard for the start. I tried putting on my sunglasses, but with the humidity and raindrops on the lenses, they were hurting my vision so I tucked them into my shirt pocket. I think I handled the climbs up pretty well, but probably could have taken it just a little easier. I was hitting higher watts than I had planned on. As I approached the 170 meter level, it got a little freaky. I guess there was a cloud sitting at about that level and visibility was about 100 meters..... and, the rain picked up. On the first descent, I was purposely conservative and trying to brake to slow down because of my experience there two years back. Nevertheless, the death wobble kicked in. I did my best to relax and lightly brake at the same time and it stopped. This pattern repeated several more times during the first half of the course. The worst case was when I could see a curve up ahead and I really wanted to slow down to deal with it because the rain was really coming down and the road surface was hard to see. I finally gave up on braking and relaxed into the curve at a higher speed than I wanted and luckily made it through. I braked more after that and was cursing very loudly at Mr. Bianchi. I guess that was a little before the halfway mark and things did get better after that - at least no more death wobbles.

From the halfway to the 3/4 point the course went back and forth across a bunch of rice fields. The roads are really narrow, sometimes slight downhill, sometimes slight uphill. In between the rice field runs, we were out on normal road for a couple hundred meters before a sharp turn back onto the narrow roads. The area is open and the wind was gusting on and off, sometimes strong headwinds, sometimes a nice tail wind, sometimes just an unexpected blast from the side. The roads were narrow enough that I did not try to pass anyone because I could not see the road surface. The rain was really brutal for this section of the course - hard enough to hurt and I was sometimes closing one eye because of the rain angle. All in all, I did pretty well on this section. I took it a little easier on the narrow downhills and pushed it harder on the narrow uphills and wider roads.

The last 1/4 of the course followed the coast. The rain slacked off, but the wind was gustier and more of a headwind. I pushed pretty hard for this section and passed quite a few people that had blown by me on the downhills earlier. I tried to keep pushing it pretty hard and was satisfied with this portion.

Nutrition: I had two gels diluted in one water bottle and the other bottle had watered down sports drink. I hit the gel about 15 minutes in and about 15 minutes away from the end. I hit the sports drink in between. This is a combination that works really well for me during Olys.

Buy a new bike? Practice more downhills to get past the death wobble (I guess it is me tensing up at about 45 km/hr coupled with some cross winds and the right slope and road condition)? In dry weather with no wobble (same winds), I think I could have dropped another 5 minutes easy.

Swag at the time. It may have been faster. I racked the bike quickly and swapped shoes quickly.

Nothing on this one.

I purposely started a little slow, but a few hundred meters in an older woman passed me running at a cadence/pace that looked just right and I opted to follow her. Great choice. She was clearly an experienced runner and her pace remained consistent all the way through. I never did catch up with her and I will have to wait for the results to see how old she was - guessing 60s. The rain stopped about 10 minutes into the run and then started again with about 10 minutes left.

Nutrition: nothing...no sport drink, no water. I took a sponge at every aid station and ran on through. The temps made this possible.



Nothing. This was one of my best runs. I ended up running the second half slightly faster than the first half and most of that was giving it my all in the last 2 kilometers. Now if I could only hold that pace for another 10 km...

Right after I finished, the skies opened up and it poured for about 10 minutes - great shower and cooldown. I grabbed some water, watermelon and then a bowl of rice curry. Usually I can't eat anything more than a piece of fruit for 2-3 hours, so this was a positive sign.


The weather, my swim endurance level, Mr. Bianchi's wobbly tendencies.....but, I was happy with my performance.


This was the 25th time they've done this race. They have their act together and the volunteers did an absolutely super job considering the weather conditions. They covered all the funky turns on the bike course and were constantly encouraging everyone to keep on going.