I got passed by quite a few teams (2 people in the boat), and 3 women were ahead of me when all was said and done. I don't remember if they started ahead of me, but doesn't matter, they finished ahead of me. Everyone had different kayaks. Mine was the only sit-on-top style. Perhaps not the fastest style of kayak. The gal that was 1st out of the water had a really long narrow fiberglass kayak. Looked super fast. My fatter kayak probably not the most streamlined, but I also never tipped it. Also lost my paddle while dragging the kayak over a long shallow area. Didn't even notice it fell out. Had to go back and get it. Lucky it got stuck in a shallow area and I didn't have to go too far, but cost me a few minutes (in a 2 hour rowing section what is a couple minutes?)

Find a faster kayak to borrow? Build up my kayaking arms/shoulders? Practice? Cut the course short? :-)

We'll call this the Run to Kayak section transition. man I wish I could re-arrange the order of these.

I had my kayak pretty close to the river. Many others had theirs back about 50 yards and had to carry them down. This was smart on my part and really sped up my TA into the river. Glad I didn't have to carry the big, heavy awkward thing more than 15 feet. Donned my life vest, but had to wait in line while other teams in front of me tried to get in their canoes. Felt like I was standing waiting forever, but it was maybe 30 seconds.

Road my new bike. Still need to get used to it. Went into the race with sore muscles from a workout on Friday. Two unsmart moves, but I didn't really care how I did at the race, it was something to do and more of a workout for me. Didn't feel like I had the leg power for this race, which may be due to the facts that the bike leg was the last event of the race, my legs were still tired from previous workout, and I was riding a brand new bike.

I had thought ahead of time I was going to kill the flat section with speed. That didn't happen as the flat section was into the wind. I probably averaged only 14 mph through the flat section -rather disappointed. Got passed by 2 gals on the course (one on a tri bike, one on a tri set-up road bike), but I passed several other guys and gals, nearly all were on hybrid or mtb bikes, so I didn't get any glory from passing them. I went into this last leg as the 4th gal and finished as the 4th gal. I assume the people I passed and the 2 that passed me were all team competitors (different category).

Skip the Friday workout. Not ride a brand new bike. Oh, and not stay up late drinking alcohol the night before. Forgot about that one!

This would be the kayak to bike transition. (run, kayak, bike was the correct order at the race). Had to remove wet sand filled shoes and socks. Wipe off as much sand from my feet as possible and don new socks and bike shoes. Also swapped out wet gloves for dry gloves. The whole change out took 3.5 minutes. Plus there was a good jaunt from the kayak section to the TA section which took about 2 minutes to jog.

Had water to rinse the sand off my feet.

Thighs didn't appreciate the hills (see previously mentioned Friday workout). Someone or something had torn down some of the course marking tape and had to stop and wait for other runners to make a group decision on which path we should follow. We must have chosen the right one as we eventually made it back out of the trails. I think the course was just short of 3 miles.

See all previous "what would you do differently" comments.

Ate a muffin, drank some water. Loaded up the kayak and bike. Missed the awards. :-(


Pretty obvious here. Race was fun and challenging and I was happy with it despite not bringing and giving my A game.


no drink stations. You didn't need them. Pretty much self supported course. Liked how the course was so different from all other tri formats. It was challenging for sure.