Caught a good draft on the guy in front of me! I projected my finishing time as around 8:00, and he projected around 7:15, so I figured I'd lose him in the first 50m, but I stayed with him easily for the first 3 1/2 laps and passed him on the fourth!

Nothing. I think I could have gone a little faster, but I would have lost my draft so it probably wouldn't have been worth it.

I think that drying my feet off before putting my socks and shoes on takes a long time. But I don't want grass and dirt inside my shoes, giving me blisters throughout the bike and run, so I don't know how to get around that.

Used my Cateye for the first time -- I LOVE it! It told me what gear to be in the whole time! I'd been guessing at my cadence until now, and this made it SO EASY -- all I had to do was glance at my computer, and I knew whether I should be upshifting or downshifting. As soon as my cadence dropped below 85 or rose above 105, I'd shift. It was wonderful.

The above being said, my speed was pretty low. It was even lower than it was in my last race, which I felt was a much hillier and more challenging course. I think I REALLY need to work on speed on the flats, and I also might need to get fitted properly on my bike. I felt like I couldn't get forward far enough over my aerobars to really rest on them, and I probably need a shorter stem.

They didn't time splits, so I have no idea how I actually did at the transitions. I'm guessing, based on knowing my times for the swim and the bike. I'm pretty sure that my transitions are inefficient, though.

The run was HARD. I had to stop and WALK, TWICE. On a 3-mile course. Up both of those hills. :-) And here I'm really confused, because I have my official finishing time; and I have my swim time because there was a guy with a stopwatch calling them out when we left the pool; and I have my bike time from my cyclocomputer; but if you add up all the times I know and subtract them from my finishing time, it says I did the run at about 6:20 pace, which is just silly. So based on how I felt, the fact that I walked up two hills, and the pace at which I usually do 10K road races, I'm guessing at my time for this leg.

I think I would still walk up the hills. I would have felt horrible if I had insisted on running up them, and I think my overall pace would have been slower as a result. I think the difference should be in training -- I obviously need to do more hill work. I equally obviously need to do more long bricks. Let's see if I take my own advice this time. :-)

Walked around, stretched, packed up my stuff.


Training. I need to train faster, obviously. I also need to do more bricks (see above).


I was 2/12 for my age group! I placed! I was so excited! It was doubly cool because I did a 4M road race the day before, and placed 2nd in my AG in that one, too, and then I ran another 6 miles, so I thought I was going to be really tired for this race and not do very well. But I think I did about as well as I could have given my training, so I was pleased. And it was a nice race. The volunteers were really nice, the pool was wonderful, the run course was a lot of fun (except there were some confusing points in the run course. I only knew where to go a couple of times because there was someone ahead of me -- they should have had either more signs, or volunteers directing people at these points). It was a lot of fun! I love triathlons!