Swim was pretty solid for me. would be my longest continuous swim in the year. sighting was easy and there was no contact due to the small field.
glanced at my watch after the first lap and say 17:xx and was pretty stoked. At the start of the 2nd lap I veered off course into oncoming traffic (doh!) and had to reroute, but otherwise very happy with the swim.

stay on target

small transition area which made it fast. wetsuit that wouldn't come off the ankles made it slow.

maybe body glide the legs of my wetsuit.

right out of T1 I messed up my garmin timing by hitting lap in multisport too many times. fogged glasses! had to play with the garmin and didn't start recording until a couple miles into the bike. Need to work on garmin management.

plan was to keep my watts around 250 for the first 30 min, but I didn't. clearly came out too hot looking back at the data...was about 275w, was feeling good, though.

About half way through the 2nd lap my tire blew. didn't see anything in the road. Changed the tube in about 10 min.

Made it another full loop and with about 10miles left to go and my rear tire blew again. had to wait for the support van. they gave me a tube and installed it and after they pumped it up they spotted a gash in my tire. so the went to the van and got me a new tire and installed it.

Lost about 30 minutes in total with the two flats. My tire was clearly end-of-life and I should have replaced it before the race. oh well.

Tried to make up time (stupidly) and pushed the bike too hard. NP average was 279w which is about .83 IF, which is close to what I was shooting for, but my surges were way too high (i.e. my max power was 950w...wtf was I thinking?). need to smooth the riding out and lower the IF to have a good run.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/372128999




chill.
fresh tires.
better nutrition. I think I took in too much in retrospect. Had two bottles of IM Perform with 3 scoops each (about 200 cals) and 3 gels. Also grabbed 2 bottles of Gatorade on the course but with the crappy bottles most of that just spilled on me.

took my time. was a little bummed by the ride issues. but the family was there cheering for me which was great.

felt bloated and crampy in the gut right away and knew this would be a struggle. probably took in too many calories on the bike and then continued to do so on the run. first lap was running around the 8:30-8:45 range, but knew I was heading downhill. 2nd lap was a sufferfest and was 10-12m miles. Lost my cookies a couple times. walked a bunch. but made it home.

not barf x2

ahh, the joy of a small race. with all my trials and tribulations I still came in 3rd in the M40-44 category. there were only 7 of us and the 1st place guy was on the Overall podium, so I got bumped up to 2nd and got some hardware. haha.


flat tires (my fault for not checking prior)
poor pacing on the bike
poor nutrition.

plenty to work on before IMFL.


this is a great low-key race.