This was actually the most brutal 70.3 swim start I've had! Within the first 200 or so meters I had my goggles knocked clear off my head and had to stop and put them back on. After that some girl tried to swim over me 3 times. By the third time she had me pushed almost underwater and I had to choose between going under and kicking her off. Finally kicked and never had that problem again for the rest of the swim. The chop starting picking up around the first buoy, along with the seaweed. Not a bad swim, but definitely not a good one considering how much improvement I've had in the pool since last year that is just not translating to open water.

Not sure here. I managed to draft pretty well the entire race, just need to figure out why my improvements in the pool are not translating to open water time.

Long T1 for a 70.3!

I had a two piece wetsuit so instead of using the wetsuit strippers I took my top off and then ran up to T1 with my bottoms. I should have let them strip off my bottoms because it was tougher than I thought running that far in them. On the plus side it warmed me up for the bike ride.

This was a surprisingly tough one, and this coming from someone who's ridden the LP course the past so many weekends. The issue with this course is that the climbing is immediately, even with LP you have some nice downhills to get you halfway up most of the hills, Syracuse doesn't have this benefit. Somehow in all the commotion in the swim my Garmin got reset so I had no HR to base my pace off of, plus my Powerbar gels (which I've been training with) fell out of my jersey pockets so I had to live off the course which I had no planned on.

This run was tough! I had mentally prepared myself for the big hill from mile 2.2 to the turn around, but you're immediately greeted with some grassy uphills coming out of the park. That coupled with uneven ground and not having my running legs yet scared me right away. Finally settled into a pace when I hit the road. Managed to choke down my powergels for the first out and back, at which point my stomach just started shutting down. I'm not sure if it's the not getting enough electrolytes from the gu, or not drinking enough perform, but my stomach was not happy. I could only manage to sip on some perform and flat coke. Somehow pulled out a decent second loop though and nabbed my Mont Tremblant slot!

Make sure I hydrate enough on the bike!

15 minutes easy job while cheering on the rest of the athletes from my area that came down to Syracuse


Not being able to go by HR (because my Garmin got reset somehow and I tried messing with it on the bike but it was just being a pain) and probably not hydrating enough on the bike so by the time I got to the hot run it was a bit too late.


Overall, this was a very nicely organized race. Maybe it's because Eagleman was just a mess, but compared to E-man this was organized pretty well. The bike was tough, but about what I'd expect up here. The run was tough, maybe unnecessarily tough, but I think this benefited me in the end since I'm used to mountain running and snowshoeing.