About 5 minutes before the start, for some reason, I totally relaxed. I came to the conclusion that .6 miles is .6 miles whether it is in the pool or in a lake, and that the worst that could happen is I would go way off course.

The horn went off and we ran in, once the water was above my thighs I dove in and started swimming. LOTS of contact at the beginning. Ironically, I found the contact kind of fun. I didn't like the guy trying to swim over me (multiple times). I switched to breast stroke with a frog kick and he backed off.

Rounded the first buoy without much problems. It was a long straight away, and there were not many people around so I switched back to freestyle and attempted to find my groove. My stroke was really strong here, good glide, good bi-lateral breathing. Would switch to breast stroke when I wanted to site. My goggles started fogging up, but this was not a problem since buoys were a wonderful flourescent orange. Rounded the next set of buoys and made the turn for for the long straight away home.

At this point, my goggles were almost completely fogged up. I didn't want to stop because I never practiced putting goggles on without hanging on to a wall. Could still see the buoys so I thought I was OK. I got really scared when there were suddenly a bunch of people around me (caught the back of the previous wave). Drifted a little bit to the left during the straightway and had to make a little adjustment to find the swim exit. When the water was waist high, stopped swimming and started running.

Not get so nervous, find someway to keep the goggles from fogging (they fog up in the pool too). With the exception of a little dabbling last summer, this was my first open water swim and I think it went awesome.

Time includes the run up from the beach. Already had the cap and goggles off. Put the helmet on first, cleaned off my feet, and dried off. Socks and shoes went on smoothly. Grabbed the bike and headed off.

I think a tupperwear to dip my feet in would have sped things up a little bit (took a little time to get the sand off the feet). Need to figure out just how dry I need to be in order to keep the socks dry. Think I spent too much time drying off.

Knew I had a beneficial cross wind at the start so I pushed pretty hard for the 'out' section. Passed quite a few people, unfortuneately most of them were the back of the half-iron man pack.

Turnaround was a little tight, so I had to slow way down. Got back up to speed fairly quick. Wind was strong so I focussed on keeping my cadence up and my hearrate reasonable. Passed six or seven people on the 'back' section.

This was a good bike for me. I never got passed.

Maybe push a little harder on the back section.

Good transition, I am not ready to do the 'ride on top of the shoes' thing so I unvelcroed my shoes while riding. Good run to my spot. Racked the bike, kicked off the cycling shoes, and slapped on the running shoes.

Not a thing, this was an awesome transition for me.

Knew there was a couple of people in transition when I left, so I started out pretty quick to put some distance between me and them. Grabbed some water at the first aide station which was at mile one. Glanced at my watch and saw I did it in 7:00 flat. Considered slowing down, but I was still feeling great, so I kept pushing. Got passed just after the first mile, there was no way I could keep up so I let him go. Reached the turnout and still felt strong so I decided to take it up another knotch.
Passed a couple people on the way back in. Ran strong all the way to the finish, didn't get passed again.

Nothing, this was a strong run for me. If the course was measured acurately, this was 5k PR.

Grabbed some water and then walked around for a bit. After awhile, got some muffins and cookies and cheered on the other sprint competitors. After awhile, the half iron athletes started coming in from the bike so I cheered them on too.


I'm not sure anything did. This was my very first triathlon and I thought it went spectacular.


This was a great race for a great cause. It was well organized with lots of volunteers. Only complaint was it started late. Someday I hope to do the half ironman.