First Tri. No wetsuit. I flat out didn't know how to swim. Freestyle for about 50m the rest was done with the "snow-angel" backstroke. I was in the water long enough to get cold, even with air temps in the 80-90 degree range.

Learning to swim. Making great strides, or should I say strokes....

Exhausted from the swim. No real practice.

Swim better, practice t1 in training.

Fun course. A person with mtn. Bike skills would have a blast. It was way tougher than I expected,

Back story here, I signed up for this three weeks before the event, and started training then. Previously I had not trained or exercised for any length of time for the last 18 years or so.

I would train more!

Changed shoes, ate a powerbar, grabbed my half frozen water bottle, and "ran"

What can I say. I was fat, undertrained and tired. I'm happy I was able to pretend to run for parts of the course :)

Already doing it. Dropped from 245lb to 185, training now for a HIM. I'm gonna crush this course in 2014

When I say it was too hard, I mean it was too hard for my fitness level. Already signed up for 2014, it will NOT be too hard this time.