This is an unusual swim. It's in a very small "lake" (they called it the clayhole, I don't know what that means). The swim took out the entire body of water and with the time trial start it was constant people. I can't say I felt great, and since I stopped a few times to look and get my bearings I am not surprised by my pace. Oh well, you can only have so many victories in one day...

I guess now that I am over that hump I need to work on my swimming without the wetsuit. Although I am not so inspired to bother. I can swim fine in the pool and the opportunity for warm open water isn't that plentiful until July each year.

Well, no wet suit sure helped here!

The bike course was altered due to new chipseal, so it was shortened from 16 to 15.6. We learned this in a e-mail before the race, I haven't checked my bike computer yet.

This went pretty well. My goal today was to really push myself on the bike, I have gotten lazy in races. I haven't been training enough to really bike well, but this is a huge leap for me. Right away I passed a ton of girls I recognized from my swim group - yay! Apparently I passed a lot because my AG bike rank was 7/25! The hills were mostly manageable. I went flying over a railroad track and it was really a hard bump, I am glad my tires survived. Fortunately the majority of the uphills were in the first part of the course. The last 4 miles or so were a breeze. The minimum maintenance road they used due to the chipseal issue was pretty bad, but fortunately short.

It rained pretty much the whole time and got so hard in the middle I almost stopped simply because the big hard rain drops hurt at speed. The course wasn't terribly technical, so other than the annoyance the rain didn't really interfere. I wish I had enough guts to bomb the hill at the very end of the course. Fun!

The insole of my shoe got bunched so I lost a few seconds taking the shoe off and on a second time. I neglected to take a gel with me on the run, which I think is a mistake for me.

This was definitely the hardest regular tri run I've done. The first half is uphill, like really up a hill. The incline was bad enough and then I had paced the bike so hard everything hurt more than usual. FINALLY hit the downhill and just ran as hard as I possibly could. I wish I had the splits for each mile. I knew I ran the risk of a tough run after the hard bike, so I am actually quite pleased with this result. Fortunately it was cool and still damp, so I had good weather luck for me. So the overall time is fine, but there was a LOT of walking in that first segment.

I really liked this race. The pond was cute and the bike course was really promising. The run is a little masochistic, but you're all in the same boat. The downhill part more than makes up for it.

The food was great. A warm square of egg bake, fruit, yogurt, and a mini muffin. Really creative and different, perfect for a morning race. I will definitely come back!