I was thinking before I headed to the race that this probably needed to be a tempo workout instead of an all out effort. Both because I'm still tired from BP and because the 1/2 won't be an all out paced effort. After I saw the waves on the water, I thought maybe I would go hard figuring the rest of the field would struggle, but once the swim started I realized I just didn't have it. My arms and back were feeling tired in the first 200, so I just slowed down and decided to go ahead and make the whole race a tempo workout. The rest of the swim went smoothly, nice comfortable pace, good sighting, no problems. It was good practice to fight the waves, and breathing was challenging at times with the white caps smacking us in the face, but it was kind of fun (in a challenging way) to swim in the crappy conditions.

Probably should have worn the wetsuit. It would have helped in the chop and I was a little cold by the time I got done with the swim. Otherwise, nothing, I made a good decision to back off and turn this into a tempo workout.

Took it nice and slow through here. I'm still nursing blisters from BP, so I sat down and dried off my feet completely, put on a new moleskin patch on my left foot, put on socks for the run, and finally got going.

Nothing, more important to take care of my feet now and have a slow transition at a training event than to exacerbate an existing blister problem, get it infected, and have trouble coming up to the 1/2.

Sticking with the theme of a tempo workout, I took the first mile just to warm up and find my legs. Went about 8:41 on the first mile, which was slower than I intended, but with the wind and my legs feeling bad already, I really didn't mind too much. Picked it up a little into the turn around after seeing that first split, and hit the turn at 12:41. Grabbed a water at the turn, felt a little tiny bit better, and started to push a little more up to the top of the hill. At 2 miles I was at just under 17 minutes, so I could see the pace picking up a little. After I crested the hill, I knew it was a nice cruise down and then into the home stretch, so I picked it up on the way downhill, then hammered the last 3/4s of a mile. Nice negative split to come in at 23:49, so 11:08 on the second half (7:10 pace).

Nothing, given how bad my legs felt, I think it was a good choice to make that a tempo workout.

Walk around, stretch, eat and drink beer with everyone.


Fatigue and lack of motivation to go hard.


Thanks to Mike Ricci for not being a sissy. Mike could have easily cancelled the race given the conditions, and I'm glad he didn't. Conditions aren't always perfect, and it's good to train in crap every once in a while in case it's crappy on race day.