This course is listed as .3 miles, or 528 yards, but the official results show me with a 2.01 pace. Whatever it is, I felt like I had a good swim except that I got stuck behind a crowd after both turns. This was disappointing since we were placed in waves based on self reported swim times, and I was in wave 3 of 9, where wave 1 was the ITU group that had a 10 minute head start.

I don't know. I'm swimming faster in the pool but I think I become so concerned with navigation in OW that I forget to swim.

I'm not sure where the transition area started and the swim ended, but I may have taken too long getting through the shower. Other than that I seemed to be moving pretty good. My rack was in the worst place so maybe that hurt a little.

Hustle.

I was winded right off the bat for some reason. My plan was to take it easy up the two largest hills to save my strength for the flats, but I think I would have been better off with the pedal to the metal the whole way. This time is about the same as my solo practice times on this course and I expected to be faster with the course closed to traffic. I guess the swim took more out of me than I thought.

I witnessed my first tri crash (I guess I should say not counting my own super slow-mo crash in this race last year), the guy two bikes in front of me couldn't make the turn onto Braelin Road and hit the curb and landed in the median. He seemed to be unhurt and was re-mounting as I went by.

I think I may work in some swim-bike bricks before next season, but I'm hoping to be a different triathlete by then anyway.

I walked out of T2 to recover a bit, so it surprises me that T2 was faster than T1.

I can do fast transitions, I just haven't felt like I was really racing since early this season so I haven't rushed it. I'm embarrassed to admit I even have that attitude

I am very familiar with this course, which was run backwards from last years race. Kelly convinced me to ride it on my bike last week to see how different it was in the opposite direction. The first mile is a roller coaster ride of small hills that on a bike you can coast down and almost up to the top of the next. I really cannot run uphill, thanks to an everlasting hamstring injury, and I somehow convinced myself that I would run quickly down the hills and coast up the next. It didn't work out. I ran down and was forced to walk up as usual. I got no coast at all. After that was a flat mile, then up and down one long hill, so I finished stronger than I started, but still not happy.

Not much I can do.

Lack of any run training due to injury and lack of ability to run in the race for the same reason. Being Clydesdale + 58 doesn't help either.

After the race, I had fleeting thoughts of hanging up the spandex for good, but the truth is that I love doing this and that is why I'm so discouraged when I'm not capable of doing it the way I want to do it.


I love this race. The tri club does this once a year and they put a lot of effort into doing it right. Someone even scraped the goose poop off of the transition area before the race. You've got to appreciate that kind of attention to detail.