I've only swam twice in the last 3 weeks, but I thought my swimming background would be enough to pull me through. Note to self, you need to focus on training your weakness, but that doesn't mean you completely neglect the strength.

I also didn't realize until I was in line that the pool was in meters instead of yards (it was clearly marked in the materials, just missed it). As a result, I was seeded too fast. Swimmers started every 15 seconds. I pushed it hard to not hold people up, but I got passed by 2 people.

The swim was tough - I was pushing hard, which I'm pretty sure my pushing it caused my stroke to fall apart. I was very tired after 400, which usually doesn't happen to me.

All that said, I thought when I was in the middle of the swim that I was barely crawling along, but afterwards my time wasn't too horrible. This time includes about 15 sec of running from the pool to the transition area, and the course was about 10-15 meters longer than the 400 because you had to turn into the zero entry to exit the pool.


Swim more before, and seed myself correctly. Pretty simple.

Longer run from T1 to the mount line than my last race, but not too bad. The grass in transition had been mowed recently or something, because there was grass everywhere. I did a great job of staying on the concrete and avoided getting any grass on my feet. However, there were 3 of us in parallel with our bike at the mount line, and when I moved over to make room for everyone, I stepped in a pile of sand right next to the mount line. I tried to brush off the sand, but it was pretty much stuck, so I hopped on and decided to suck it up.

Not step in a pile of sand? Not sure why there was a pile of sand...

Clearly my bike can still use some work. I'm still scared of blowing up on the run, so I hold back too much.

After about 1/2 a mile, there is a left turn onto a 9% grade hill for about 1/3 of a mile. Since you are just coming out of a turn, you don't have very much speed heading into it, so you're grinding the whole way up. I thought I might have to get off and walk, but there was no way I was going to do that. Burned a lot of matches on that hill. At the top, it took me about a mile or so to get my legs comfortable under me again. I didn't realize it at the time, but we had a tail wind on the way out, and I tried to keep the effort constant but not push too hard with the goal of pushing it harder after the turnaround. Then I turned and the wind hit me straight in the face. Between the wind and that hard push up the hill, I didn't feel like I could push it (I could have).

The course was a little longer than advertised, and I think there was a slight timing issue. My 910xt had the course at 12.6 miles and my time about 30 seconds faster (average of 16.7 rather than 15.6). Also, we came back into transition on a slightly different route than we went out, and the volunteer wasn't paying attention and guided me down the wrong street. Luckily I was able to see everyone else, so I didn't have to turn around and met up with them later, but it was frustrating to feel like I was going the wrong way. That being said, other than the big hill, this was a nice course.



Not have sand in my shoes (still irritates me...). Push harder.

Pretty uneventful. Sat down and finally got to wipe the stupid sand off my feet. Rolled on socks, got shoes on, grabbed race belt, and took off.

Maybe not sit down to put on socks/shoes? I'll have to practice that, because right now I'm pretty sure me trying to balance would take longer.

Had a goal of going sub 16min, but I just didn't have it in me mentally. I still need to work on pushing harder.

Push harder. I need to be willing to run faster on these races. Maybe I'll just go all out one time to feel what blowing up is like, then I can know how close I am. :)

Walked around, ate breakfast at the VFW across the street, then packed up and went home.


Need to train more and be able to push harder.


Other than a few hiccups, this race was good. Could use a few more volunteers, and the volunteers could be better at directing the athletes. Other than that, this was a good race.