As I said, the swim was longer than it was supposed to be - at least according to a number of guys who based that on their Garmins. I believe they are right as it looked and felt longer than 660 yds and the swim times looked more appropriate to a longer swim. I'm guessing that the start was moved further south than normal because of the nesting loggerhead turtles.

Each wave had about 150 swimmers which made the swim quite crowded and caused me to get caught in the washing machine despite starting way right and hanging back a few seconds. Also, the current and chop were pretty strong on the way to the first buoy, so that plus the crowds plus my high heart rate b/c of lack of warm up made this section very hard and slow. I actually came to a complete stop on at least 2 occasions. i don't recommend that technique if you want to score a good swim time!
After the first buoy things still had not opened up and, in fact, I spent a good period of time with women swimming sideways into me, cutting me off and then slowing down. At least 3 times they came from both sides of me causing me to come to a stop to figure out a way around them. I felt like i was playing bumper cars without the cars. These women didn't seem to care where they were swimming and no matter how many times they hit me they kept their heads down and kept swimming. I guess that is what they should have done, but I can't do that - when there is a lot of contact rather than getting aggressive and swimming on top of others, I change my course.

After playing with the bumper women, i found some clear water and got into a nice rhythm. There was a bit of a side current that somewhat helped. After making the turn to shore I was able to catch a few waves. That's always fun.

Oh, I only know my time in the swim because I looked at my watch as I ran up the beach.

ETA: since they found me in the records, I now have a time, unfortunately it is slower than I thought. The swim time is almost a minute slower than I saw on my watch, but the new time includes the run up the beach, stop to hose off my feet before hitting the timing mat time. So, it is not quite as horrible as it looks :)

I really need to warm up more as my heart rate does not settle down for at least 100 yrds and it makes me feel like I am going to drown. Not a good feeling. I could also benefit from swimming in the ocean more often. Finally, I need to take control of the bumper women.

Since the timing was messed up by the officials and I do not have any time - I am completely missing from the results!, I have no idea how I did; I assume it was slow and that I need to move faster.

ETA: I continue to be slow in transition. Really need to work on this as cutting out a minute or two would help make me look faster overall!

I'm guessing move faster.

Because of my lack of training over the last almost month, I knew my run and to a lesser extent my bike would not be great. As a result my mantra was "don't burn all your matches". The first leg south was slightly uphill into a wind of about 15 mph. Each time I looked at my watch my pace was between 18 and 18.5 mph. The leg north was a lot of fun as the wind was at my back and there was a slight down hill. Still, I didn't want to blow up, so I kept the pace around 20 mph.
On the start of the 2d
lap i was passed by a woman -not in my AG, who I thought shouldn't be passing me. I was going to pick up the pace and keep with her or pass her, but then I remembered my mantra about not burning all my matches, so I decided just to keep her in sight. Then I got distracted and when I remembered her, she was no where in sight. oops.

Just as I was about to make the u-turn for the final north leg I decided that no matter what I did on the bike, the run was not going to be pretty, so i may as well enjoy the last bike leg. I picked up the pace to about 22 mph. Still not crushing it, but pushing a bit harder than the other legs.

ETA: pace is a bit slower than I expected, but what are you going to do?

All things considered, I'm fine with this bike.

Again, I have no idea how slow this was. I did, however, finally figure out that I don't have to stay at the rack to put on my hat and race belt and actually did those things as I moved out of transition. So, that had to make this transition a little less pathetic than normal.

ETA: not too bad for me, but still room for improvement.

Who knows.

I know this pace because I reset my Garmin -which I had somehow screwed up and didn't get a proper reading for the rest of the race.

I knew this was not going to be my finest run, but was surprised by how well it went. I am definitely out of running shape and my hamstring and glute were not really happy with me, but everything went better then I thought it would. I think what helped is that it was overcast the entire morning, so we did not have to deal with 90* weather with pounding sun. Also, things are healing, so my hamstring is not as angry as it has been.

Remember that woman who I didn't think should be passing me on the bike and who I lost sight of despite my directive to myself to keep watch her? Of course you do. Well, I found her - around the mile mark. She was really struggling. I tried to encourage her, but she didn't acknowledge my helpful "embrace the suck" exhortation.

Right towards the end of the run 2 women in my AG passed me. The second one said "let's go" to me. I just waived her on. - at least acknowledging her exhortation :) I had nothing left to give and was already on the verge of puking. I usually can pick things up a bit at the end, but that was not happening this race. While disappointing, it at least told me that I gave the race my full effort. This lack of response cost me a podium spot. At least that is what I think based upon figuring out my time as a function of the race clock (what it read when I crossed minus how many minutes passed from race start to my wave start). I've conservatively estimated my time, but may be off by as much as 2 minutes.

ETA: this is the one official time I am happy about - it is a bit faster than my Garmin time. I'll take it :)

Nothing except maybe puking on the women who passed me :). I did what I could do given my injury situation. I am disappointed only because before the injury I was following a "get faster" plan and was curious to see how that plan would effect my race. I was going to compare last year's time to this year's. Of course, with the longer swim, the comparison would not be very helpful anyway.

injury and the accompanied lack of training. Oh, and lack of ability.


I really like this race. I am a bit disappointed that they messed up the timing, so I don't have a very accurate accounting of my race, but I still had a lot of fun. I hope they can straighten out the timing issues - I mean can they really think people ran 6+ minute 5ks? There was one woman who finished a place or 2 above where I think I finished who ran a 12+ minute 5 k. I don't think that is accurate :) She was 2d in the AG. Assuming that is an inaccurate time, she probably finished well out of 2d place. This doesn't affect my performance, but I like checking out times and seeing how I do or do not stack up.

Once again, it was nice to do this race with 3 of my siblings. I really thought my sister Carol would beat me this time because - although she hadn't biked or swum more than 4 or 5 times in the last year (those times coming in the last month), she is a natural athlete and stays in shape in other ways. Plus she is a former swimmer, so she normally crushes my swim time even though she swims breast stroke. Unfortunately, she had a tough start to the swim when a couple of people held her under the water. She only does tris maybe 1x a year, so she is not used to the contact and this caught her by surprise and shook her up a bit. She swallowed a ton of water and almost abandoned the race. Very proud of her for pushing on and finishing the race quite strongly.

ETA: now that I have my official time, I am no longer disappointed by not being able to compare my results against others. Now I'm just disappointed that the official results are 2 minutes slower than I thought! One good thing about the slower time is that I don't have to regret those 2 women passing me at the end of the race - even if I held them off I still would have been of the podium. So I've got that going for me :)

My brothers also had great races, especially Peter who hadn't done anything since our last race in early May because his work has been crazy. He also drove 20 hours over the 2 days before the race - going to Atlanta and back before the race.; getting home the night before I don't know how he does it.