So it turns out the cold was not really a factor in my swim. i ended up having other things to worry about. I started in the open wave (forgot to change it when I decided I would not be finishing) so there was not really any congestion with only about 20 total starting in that wave and the fact that I was at the back from the very 1st stroke. The water was really rough and the wind and chop were directly into our faces. I just could not swim and got smacked in the face by some waves, also got some moutfuls of water. I guess I sorta freaked out. I started to tread water trying to figure out where to go and what to do. There was a boat close by and after about 200yds of basically very slow arm flailling I thought about putting up my hand for the boat to come pick me up. I treaded more water and convinced myself to just get around the turn bouy and things would improve. I eventually mad the turn and things did get better. I never did find a decent stroke and although the last 2/3 of the swim were better than the start it was still not good. In retrospect even the top swimmers were 5-6min slower than what they normally do, so for a total non swimmer I guess I did not do as bad as I thought, but still feel it was bad.

try to stay more calm and just work on being smooth and long.

I was in no hurry during T1 as I was not racing and just wanted to get through it sorta of smoothly.

turn on my garmin 1st thing b/c it caused a litte issue at start of bike.

I need to make sure to turn on the garmin 1st thing in T1 because by the time I got going it was still searching for a satellite. Now I do not need gps but my date would not show for those 1st 4mi while it searched. I would like to be able to see power data from the get go so I can be sure to go out at right pace.
My piriformis was super tight and sore from the get go on the bike. I think this was maybe due to a harder and longer than expected swim. There was a big headwind in the 1st 12mi. I actually held my planned power for the 1st 27mi and it did not feel to bad. The next 12mi or so my power was down, but I was trading back and forth with a guy I caught so my speed stayed up. As we turned right onto Hwy 53 I sort of lost it. This stretch of road is nortoriously rough and bumpy. I was not able to maintain my power and I struggled over the final 20mi. In the last 10mi, the hammies/glutes/piriformis resurfaced and really start to hurt.
Coming up tp T2 it would have helped if knew the course. I thought I was pretty close and got my feet out my shoes. Turns out I still had 1mi to ride, so that was sort of stupid.

really try to stay focussed and concentrate even if conditions are not ideal

Again my plan was not to try and fly through T2. The fact that my butt area was so sore made it even slower. I decided to put on socks (normally I would race sockless) b/ c 4wks ago at the duathlon I ended up with a crazy blister and there is actually still a scab in place. I had to sit on the ground to get socks and shoes on.

would not have done much different under circumstances, but in future I need to be able to go sockless again and speed things along.

Going on to the run course, my butt area problem was very evident and was quite sore. It did not restrict my run per say but it did force me to go slow for fear of getting hurt. My plan was to run 7:45's for 6mi and hope that my calf did not experience any ill effects. Got throught 1st mile in 7:30. The hammie issue started to ease somewhat after a few miles. Lose 1 problem and gain a new one. After 1mi my feet started to go numb and progressively got worse to the point that I could not really feel my feet and it felt like I was running on wooden pegs. Miseed 2mi mark, but got 3mi and I went through those 2mi in 13:08. I really just saw the 08 and thought I just went 7:34 x2 but it was actually a 6:34 avg. 4mi came in 6:27 and not realzing that the previous 2mi were at about that pace just thought they must have put the 4mi marker in the wrong spot. Kept the next 3mi all in the 6:30 range and it did not feel fast at all. I think I could have kept going at that pace till the end. A thought crossed my mind to finish the whole thing, but with the numb feet not getting any better but maybe worse I thought it was wise to stick with original plan to end my day at half way. I stopped running at 7mi mark after a 6:14mi. Not sure how accurate the mile markers were b/ c it did not feel like I was running 6:30 pace
Time to make the walk of shame of not finishing. I was going to be walking down the end of the bike course. If that was not bad enough little did I realize that my walk back to transition would actually end up being about 2.5mi so took a quite a while. Wow even my walk of shame had some issues today.

grab a can of Dr. P


liited swimming ability in rough water.
Unexpected pain son bike
numb feet on run
longer than expected walk of shame.


Overall a good race, but not sure I would want to finish the bike on Hwy 53 again