Doing better every time at the swim, probably by calming down. The wetsuit helps tremendously. Caught a few people from the wave before us and came out of the water at least mid-wave if not better. Now that I have the results, it turned out I ranked highest in the swim (in the overall rankings) this time. This is unprecedented, folks! If my swim is now my strongest event, I suspect that the earth is not spinning properly on its axis. Or something. Oddly, I rank less well at swimming among the women than in the overall rankings. Are women better swimmers than men?

Nothing. REAL happy with this one.

I'm not sure what that helmet on/suit off at same time one means. Are you supposed to be kicking off your wetsuit with your feet while attaching your helmet? I always need both hands to yank off my wetsuit. This was a pretty fast transition though. Popped on glasses and helmet, yanked off wetsuit, grabbed bike, ran for the mounting line.

Having my shoes attached to the frame worked really nicely, but it took more time than I wanted to get my feet properly snugged up in my shoes so that I could take off. The problem is that I'm using mountain biking shoes that are ordinarily lace-ups, and I take out the laces and just use the velcro closure at the ankle. They fit a little looser than they should and it's all a little awkward. Maybe Santa will bring me better shoes....

The cycling is usually my strongest event. I ought to enter some cycling races.

Really starting to long for aerobars, not quite ready for that level of commitment to this whole thing. Disappointed at my pace, really. I was trying to get closer to 20 mph.

No problem with this transition. Put socks on here but it went pretty fast.

Started out sluggish and felt pretty good through the middle. Got a sideache midway, probably from eating a Gu on the bike in an attempt not to get so wasted in the run. That went away after a while, but I didn't feel as strong as I'd hoped toward the end. There were several people I should've caught and didn't.

I probably need more long brick training, working on speed at the end of the workout. This is a way slower pace than I do even on my long runs.

Came over the line and immediately had to stand still for nearly a minute while a woman struggled to get the timing chip band off my leg and someone else had similar difficulties tearing the strip off my number. It was like being the Straw Man in the Emerald City. Then I immediately found myself chasing and carrying my 3-yr-old, which is less like a warmdown than another workout.


Wasn't really trying for a full race effort today, more of a workout to prepare for Iowa Games next week where I'm competing with a friend. Considering that, I was very happy with how it went. Events have gotten in the way of my training a lot lately, so I was glad to see that I don't seem to have lost any fitness since the Pigman.


The post race activities were severely compromised by the onslaught of a massive thunderstorm and then tornadoes. The main tent nearly blew away! My little boy was scared to death and clinging to my neck, rain was bucketing down, and in the end we all had to run for the nearest building through the rain because of the tornado warning. It's hard to judge what the organizers had done because everything went so haywire, but up to that point it had all been great, really professional. We even acquired a nice folding chair that someone abandoned in the chaos, so if someone is looking for the one they lost, drop me a PM and I'll get it to you!