Felt great. Haven't done an open-water swim in a few years, but it all came back so quickly. I wish the swim could've been longer. We started one at a time. I passed about 15-20 people, and did not get passed.

I probably could have gone a little faster, but I was concerned about spending too much energy too early.

I mlost so much time here, and so many people that I passed on the swim caught up to me (and some even passed me) before I even had my shoes on. I ran into the transition, I just wasn't very quick getting inot my running clothes/shoes from there.

Need to practice this transition. Putting on socks took forever, and actually having a tri-suit or shorts might have saved me a little time as well.

This part of the race was pretty horrible for me. I came off what felt like a great swim, and then started getting passed almost immediately by the more experienced cyclists. I knew this would happen, but I felt like I was going as fast as I could, and some of the guys out there were passing me like I was barely moving. On a more positive note, this is the fastest pace I've ever biked, probably because all of my training rides involved traffic and frequent stops for stop signs, red lights, etc.

I need to spend more time training on my bike. I need to get more comfortable making turns at higher speeds, get better at going up hills, and try to develop a cadance that I can maintain. Lots of work to do, but definitely the most room for improvement.

This was a decent transition. I knew that my first one was bad, and I was determined to do better on this one. I had to come to a stop before I dismounted my bike, but then I ran the bike to my spot, racked it, took off my helmet, took a swig of Gatorade, and then started running.

Need to learn to dismount quicker. Also could have removed or at least unclipped helmet once I was dismounted and running.

Felt horrible during the run. I walked for a bit on the three big hills (Pedestrian bridge, 1st, and 3rd), but tried to run as much as I could. Made sure to run the entire last mile. Didn't feel too great, but I actually did a faster time than the July 4th 5K that I ran in downtown Nashville less than a month ago, which was a similar course.

Force myself to run the whole thing. No walking.

Walked around the finish area until my legs stopped hurting.


Inexperience?


I had a lot of fun. This was my first triathlon, but from what I could tell the race seemed like it was fairly well organized. I will probably be back next year.