Pretty uneventful swim. Had to come to a complete stop 3 or 4 times because of someone swimming right into me. My sighting was ok, so assuming they were off line. My time was a couple minutes slower than last year. A few people said the swim was long, and comparing other racers times from last year, it seems that could be the case.
Looking back at this swim, I did not stay focused on swimming strong the entire time. I had a couple of times where I found myself thinking about what was coming up in the race and had to kick myself to focus and pick up the pace.

Keep focused on the swim instead of thinking about other parts of the race.

Strong winds (around 20 mph) made this flat course more difficult than last year. I had a decent bike split, but should have been faster. Looking back at last year, I averaged almost 20 watts more last year than this year. I definitely could have pushed harder.

Stay focused on pushing harder making sure to stick to my power targets.

Legs felt good the entire race. For the first time ever in a Tri, I had an even split for the 1st 5k versus the 2nd.

Again - probably could have pushed a little harder at the end. There was no one around me to use as motivation.

Mental focus! I need to stay engaged with the leg of the tri that I am in at the time and stay focused on hitting my targets.


Not sure what is going on with HFP as I have always thought they did a great job in the past. However, this time there were no results immediately like there were last year. It actually took a couple of days before the results were even posted online.
Also, the post race food/drink was lacking! They only had lemonade, cookies, bananas, and watermelon. Then, they now set up a concession stand where you can buy real food, soda, bottled water, and sports drink. I am all for keeping race fees to a minimum, but this seems like a critical item that should not be minimized.