This was my first open water swim. The swim distance was only 150m, which is basically my warm-up in the pool. However, the water was cold (68F) and the visibility in the lake was nil. We waded in for the start and a had a few minutes to get acclimatized to the temperature. I did a very short warm-up off to the side (but I don’t think it was nearly enough). Start is announced and I'm redlining it from the start - I didn't intend to but with all the adrenaline, I was telling myself to stop kicking so much, but my body wasn't listening. I sight - and I am going too far to the right, so I corrected. I swim some more and after sighting again I realized that I over-corrected and was about to broadside a bunch of swimmers. I corrected again but quickly hit a traffic jam by the buoy. GPS data says it took me about a minute to get to the buoy. While I did some practice in the pool turning, I wasn't nearly as smooth due to the other people. I didn't want to swim into people, but this caused me to slow. I tried to water polo swim around this group which was tiring and slow. Getting going again was also difficult and there were lot of people in the way. It took about 25 yards to be able to get some space and get going again.

My overall time compared to my pool time was pretty good so I am not too unhappy about it. (I am not good at turns in the pool). Even if everything went well, I might have gained 40 seconds at best.

1. Be more aggressive in passing and going around people.
2. I need more open water swim practice, but given when I started training (December) this has been impossible due to water temperature.
3. Practice turning more
4. Not kick as much. Perhaps force myself to wait a second or two to start.

Jogged into transition, feeling a little tired/ disoriented from the swim, but not too bad. I didn't wear a wetsuit, so I had an advantage against those that did.

The only thing I did wrong was spending a little too much time drying my feet and getting grass blades off. I rather quickly corrected myself, got my cycling shoes on and headed out. My rack was near the mount point, so I didn't have to run far in my shoes.

I passed 6 people in transition, and got passed by 2.

Less time drying off my feet

Overall it was a fairly good ride which was rather consistent with recent training time trials. Getting on, getting going, and clipping in was fairly smooth, helped by some recent practice as well as setting the crank arm in the right spot prior to transition.

I quickly passed some of the kids that exited T1 before me in the first mile. Then I started getting passed by a lot of people, mostly the riders doing the full sprint. Of those doing the super sprint, I ended up passing 5 people and getting passed by 5 others.

When we hit the 2nd u-turn, I noticed that this young girl wasn’t too far behind me, but more on that later.

Just need more time in the saddle. My bike segment is clearly my weakness.

Everything went fairly smoothly and was slightly faster than my practice runs. Some others were faster because they didn't wear cycling shoes.

There was a 16 year old guy who had the bike spot right next to me. He was out of T1 before me, but I passed him towards the end of the bike ride. He wasn’t wearing cycling shoes, so he was out of T2 before me.

The previous races I have done (5Ks), there were so many people and almost everyone is significantly better or worse than you, so you are really just racing against yourself. However, here, since the race was smaller, it started to feel like you were racing specific people, which was a fun motivator.

The run went pretty well and I started passing people. First it a 47 year old who seem to have stomach cramps, then I passed a 61 year old who blew by me on the bike, then it was the 16 year old who passed me in T2, and finally it was a 19 year old girl who was always just ahead of me.

However, about 1/2 mile from the finish, the 13 year old girl passed me. there was 0.5 mile left in the run, and this 13 year old girl caught up to me (ages are written on the back of your thigh), which caused me to redouble me efforts. We were back and forth, culminating in an all-out sprint to the finish. Her parents were cheering her on, while my thoughts were "must not lose to 13-yo girl!!"). I eeked it out and retained my
"man-card" by less than 1/10th of a second. (see the 3rd photo)

The final timing shows I placed ahead of her, but with equal finishing times. times are only down to a 1/10th of a second, so the difference must have been less than that. Overall, I didn't finish any slower than anyone under 30 or over 50, so I can feel pretty happy.



Not a thing.

Dry heaved on the ground off to the side, past the finish line. Then got some water, food, and just walked around, talked to folks, and got my medal


Inexperience in the open water.


As a side note for overall placement, I included the Clyd/Athena athletes and the First Timer group which were officially seperated in the overall rankings. I included the FTers since I was a first-timer myself, I just decided to race in my age group. So officially, without these groups, I was 10th out of 50. Amongst all men, I was 8th out of 30.