Happy to get going after standing around freezing for a while. Swim was a bit choppy but not as bad as earlier in the day. Started out nicely & felt strong for about the first 200m. Had to pop up a couple of time to avoid running into people and navigate around them. Flailed a little rounding the buoy and by the last 200m my stroke was pretty ragged and I was gasping for air. Saw Julia who was stripping wetsuits but I passed on this and went staright to transition.

Dish out my effort a little more evenly. Didn't have much by the end. But I was out of the water under 10 minutes - 9:51 - (my best 100m in the pool is only about 2 minutes) which gave me a boost when I saw that. My breathing was so hard I couldn't do more than an easy jog up to transition though.

First time I used the shoes-on-the-pedals technique. Wobbled a bit right in front of another guy but overall it worked well. Fastest t1 in my age group so very happy with that.

My helmet fell to the ground when I grabbed my sunglasses. Lost all of 5 seconds there. Would this loss of 5 seconds keep me off the podium? More on this later.

Pushed a good pace out of the rez and passed a number of people who just seemed out for a sunday ride. Passed a number of people who were wandering around the traffic lane and not staying left, blocking, etc. Tried to push a big gear up the hills but about the second one my legs decided they didn't like this idea. I started to get a pretty good side stitch so I decided to ease off and spin up the hills and give away a little time so that I wouldn't get a sidestitch on the run. At the 5430 Sprint I pushed hard the whole time and had a bad run due to cramping so it would seem I'm learning a lesson or two out there. Started raining on the way back in.

Not much. My legs just didn't have it in them to push hard up the hills.

Got out of my shoes a little too early. There was no mount dismount line so the guy in front of me rode his bike practically across the timing mat. Got to my spot and the woman next to me had left her bike at a 45* angle across my spot and onto my towel. Thought about just throwing it over but she was nice to me beforehand. Struggled a little to get my socks on over wet feet but not much you can do about that.

Rack next to someone who knows what they're doing.

Run felt good. Settled into a good pace and just tried to maintain it. Ryan went by me just before the turnaround & was quickly out of sight. Legs started getting tired towards the end and I started getting a couple of hot spots due to the wet feet but I pushed a harder pace for the last 1/4 - 1/2 mile and took about 2 minutes off my previous best 5k time so I was very happy.

Nothing, happy with my run.

Changed into some dry clothes and hung around with the BT group who all did awesome.


Doing a HIM 5 days before.


Race seemed a bit disorganized. There was no pre-race meeting so people were everwhere on the bike course, no mount-dismount line so people were on/off their bike at the mats and they lengthened the bike course by 2 miles without even telling us. Quite a difference from the in organization and competitiveness of the field from the 5430 series. Still I had a good race & had fun so I was happy at the end. Turns out I missed the podium by just 13 minutes, so dropping my helmet didn't matter one bit.