The swim was good. There was tons of time between heats, so we had plenty of time to warmup. I swam a continuous 200m at a nice easy pace, but there was still more time. So I swam a couple of 50s at a faster pace to stay warm while we waited. I think this was a good strategy because I felt great starting the swim. There were only three people in my lane, while some others had four. I started in the middle and went out strong but controlled. My goggles started to leak almost immediately because, even though they were fine during the warmup, the strap started to loosen on the right side as I swam, letting more and more water in. Good thing I've gotten used to swimming with an eyeful of water. The salt water pool was nice, but I didn't notice any extra buoyancy.

I caught the first swimmer pretty quickly and was planning on just sitting on her feet for a bit. I didn't ever tap her toes, but her spidey sense must have been tingling, because she stopped at the wall to let me pass. I couldn't really explain to her that I didn't want to pass and was just trying to catch a draft, so I went ahead.

When I finished my 10 laps, the timer said, "1 more!" Jerk. They had mis-counted, but I went ahead and did another, and then took it up with the race director after the race. They adjusted my time a bit, but it's still annoying.

Not much...it was a good swim.

This transition was quite slow. I had to run through a veritable minefield of goose poo to get to the transition area. Ok, forget that -- the transition area WAS a minefield of goose poo. So I spent a lot of time cleaning off my feet. Let's face it people: I definitely wasn't going to win the race, and I definitely didn't want to spend the rest of the morning pounding goose poo into the soles of my feet.

Practice my transitions to make them a little faster. I need to experiment with cycling and running without socks, at least for short distances.

The 3-loop course was billed as "mostly flat." That was a lie. What the race organizers meant by "mostly flat" was "continuously either uphill or downhill." Let's get one thing straight people: just because the overall net elevation change is zero does NOT mean the course is flat.

I felt really good on the bike, and for the first time ever I passed someone going UPhill! I tried to push it a bit more on the bike since I knew the run would be really short (but hilly). It was fun to see James and Disco on the bike course cheering for me. Overall, I felt good on the bike, ate my gels at the appropriate times, and came off feeling good for the run.

I think my bike time includes T1 and T2 times, too. I wasn't very skilled with my watch today.

Not much...it was a good ride, even though it wasn't particularly fast. The hill workouts have paid off because, even though I'm not really quick up the hills, I can do the much more comfortably than I could before.

This transition was definitely faster than T1, but I could still use some more transition practice.

Practice transitions.

I felt good starting the run. Coming out of transition, we had to go up a huge hill. I just walked it quickly, because running on rubbery legs would have been even slower. I walked up one other hill later on the course as well.

The course was indeed hilly, though I felt like I managed it pretty well. For not having done much running lately, I felt pretty great and was chatting with some other ladies on the course. I was elated to get up the final hill and cruise mostly downhill to the finish line.

I would have liked to pick up the pace a bit more during the second half of the run, but the steep hills made it hard for me to get into a groove. Maybe I should run some more hills.

Finished the race, saw hubby and Disco, and grabbed some food. Went to find the race director to get my swim time adjusted, and then headed home because there was not much going on after the race.


All those darn hills! Good thing Coach Carolyn really likes to make me do hill workouts. :)


I was kind of disappointed by the lack of post-race fanfare, but it was still a fun race and a great confidence booster after my less than stellar experience at Cowichan.