When the Mrs. comes to the races, she's nice enough to give me split times coming out of the water. When she said 30, I was shocked. I expected to be out of the water in 25 minutes or less. Sure the water was cold, the buoys on the way back in sucked, the sighting was difficult, but I'm not that slow. I tried to shake it off and went about getting onto the bike. She caught up to me as I was heading out of T1 and I asked her about the others. She then told me that everyone was coming out slow that I had in fact caught a couple people from the elite wave. That made me feel better.

I had a good swim. My tempo was solid, my sighting was as good as it could be. The swim was long, and honestly, that probably helps me more than it hurts me since I'm an above average swimmer. I only dropped 1:24 to the best time in my AG and three seconds to the second best. There were several guys in the mid 30's and above.

The cold water and the length of time in it had a temporary affect on me, and I did expect that. It wasn't my first time in water that cold. I took it easy once on the beach, walking the first 10-15 yards until I got my bearings. Then I started to jog toward transition. The route to T1 is quite long and as I progressed I picked up the pace without overdoing it.

The wet suit came off wonderfully this year. One of my reoccurring problems last year was that my legs would cramp up in T1 as I was taking off the wetsuit. This would then cause me some problems over the first mile of the bike as I worked the cramps out. I didn't have that problem this year thanks to cutting off 2 inches from the bottom of my suit. The only problem I had was that I missed with my right foot clipping into the bike so I had to take a couple extra seconds as I was getting started to get both feet clipped in.

It was my first race with the powertap. I went out thinking about keeping it in range of 210-220W. That proved to be too much. My FTP is around 235-240W and this pace proved to be too difficult to hold. I ended up fading a bit on the second loop and came off the bike with an NP of 199 and AP of 197. Other than than going a bit too hard, my racing was pretty solid. I do a lot of shifting on this course and I think I managed it really well, getting as much as i could get with a given gear on each section of the course. I stayed aero nearly the entire time, only coming up on a couple of the harder hills when I chose to open up and get more air into my lungs and leverage on the pedals.

I will pick a more conservative power target next time. 90% of FTP was too much to hold, but even more important, it was too much for a quality run on this course. If I would have gone out with 85% as a target, rode at 198W-ish, I may have ended up with a similiar time overall by not fading on the second loop.

Not much to T2. My rack was right near the 'bike in' so it was an easy in and out.

Nothing.

Even on a hard course, 44:22 is pretty bad. I should have been able to put up a mid to high 42 minute effort. I clearly cooked the bike too much and knew it by the 3rd mile. Every time I tried to push the pace below 7 min miles, I had to back off.

On some courses, you can cook the bike and still run well. On this course, that isn't true. I need to be aware of that and do a better job pacing my bike effort next year.

Sat my butt down on a park bench with a piece of pizza. They were out of chocolate chip cookies or I would have grabbed one of those too.


I could have been a minute or two faster had I paced the bike a bit better.


Generally they put on a good race, but I had to go with a 3 this time due to the difficult sighting on the swim course and the rough-ness of east side of the bike course. I hope they fix this before I race there again.