Didnt have much of a warm up as i got to the beach right on time. Not an isue, had a chance to down a gu, a sip of water and get rrady a couple mins before they sent us off. I walked to the beach with my wife who was nervous we were going to be late, but i felt good. Plus, when I stand alone for too long in the beach before we start I just get nervous. You wouldn't believe it from my rankings, but I felt like I had a great swim. I heard rumors of sea urchins in the sand at the start so I was a bit nervous, but aside from some mud and seaweed it was good. Water was completely flat, no current and they abandoned the mass start of years past. I swam at a very comfortable pace, never got out of breath and got out of the water feeling great. I wanted to come out sub 39, I didn't believe my watch when I saw 34 mins.

I'd have pushed it harder. I took it too easy.

My bike was parked right near bike entrance, and with a short run from the beach I was stripping quickly. Lots of. Ike's already gone in my row which was a bit annoying given my fast split, but looks like everyone had a good swim. Wetsuit got stuck on the heels a bit, socks wouldn't go on right away but I managed. I ran in my cleats through tranisiton, mounted quickly and was off. Passed a bunch off people at the start who were messing around getting their feet into their shoes.

To hit my goal knows looking to go 36kmph. I did 39 last week at an Oly so I felt like I had a good chance, except I was tired and stupidly did a hard 50km ride yesterday (better than the 190km ride I did. Enforce last weeks race I guess). About 400km after transition we were up our first hill. I pushed the cadence a bit and passed a lot of people. The course wound through a park mostly with a slight incline for the first ~10k so it was hard to get a gauge on my pace. I knew my HR was too high and tried to relax a bit. Once we got on the main road I got into a rhythm but still couldn't get the HR down. I felt okay, but just couldnt catch my breath and get settled. I knew I was going to have an issue if it didn't get down, but I pushed on through anyways. After 30km it got back down to a reasonable level. I found the UTurns a bit annoying, but it seemed like I handled them well and made up time on each of them. With the wind and hills I really struggled to get a grasp on my pacing. Was I going too hard? Too easy? Was I tired or was the course hard? I just ignored it and tried to stay around 36kph.. I was very happy with approx 73.5 mins for the first lap. Mostly Uneventful 2nd lap, but two funny "oops" .. I had an unsuccessful bike pee (stage freight!) and Think the group that caught me from behind might've seen too much. I accidentally grabbed an Endura bottle instead of water at the aid station and dumped it everywhere as i tried to fill up my aero bottle so I was stuck with triple concentrated infinit (which by the way if you have never trained / raced with infinit, I strongly recommend you do) and Endura instead of water. I tried to take a giant sip and then spit it out a couple times and then realized it was futile. I'd stick with Endura... People must've been laughing at me! I finished a couple mins faster than my goal and felt like I didn't push too hard.

Not ridden like an idiot the day before the race. Or not drank like an idiot all week so I would've been stronger.

Aside from taking a turn into my aisle too closely and ramming the bike rack with my pedal (and the laughs from my observing wife and the teams in transition nearby), all was good. All the bikes that were not there in T1 were still not there... That made me feel good!

Thought I had a good race, might try to push it a bit harder at the finish but generally very pleased.

Run was good - I try to stay within myself for the first half and then push on the last 10km. This worked until 17km when my garmin died. I didn't know where my HR was at or how much I had left, so I waited until 1.5km to go and dropped into a dead sprint. Passed ~10 guys on the last stretch which felt good -- probably could've gone about a minute faster, but PRd the HM by 5 minutes over my previous Open HM time.

Grabbed some food with friends


Beat my previous times by ~30 minutes!