Very little (no) warm up. Jumped in the water and about 1 minute later, they said go. When I got in the water I was in the fifth row. I didn't realize this until 5 seconds before they said go. So before the start, I found myself swimming to get in the 2nd or 3rd row. Right when it started, there was a good push I pushed hard to get in front of some people with some good contact at first, But from that pojnt on there was minimal contact along the entire course It was my first OWS of the year, so it seemed like it took forever for the turnaround buoy. But then we turned around and I noticed I could really hear the rain. It would stop as we went under bridges. I didn't feel like I was swimming entirely well as my stomach was still feeling a little "icky". I even stopped for a quick second well after the turn around point and looked at my watch. It said 24 minutes. I looked at the far off finish and figure there was no way I was going to get there by 37 minutes. So it brought me down a bit that I was swimming slow. I just kept my stroke long and focused on a complete pull until I got to the end. I threw myself onto the dock like a beached seal, looked at my watch and saw 34 minutes. I was surprised and rejuvenated. So I got a nice jog going as I headed up the ramp towards the transition. It was pouring at this point as I ran to my bike.

No wetsuit strippers, so ran the whole way to transition in wetsuit. The run took a little over 1 minute. I put my sunglasses down my jersey top in case they fogged up and I could take care of that while on the bike. Put salt tabs in my back pocket, put my helmet on and took off.

Since this was training for IMLP, my goal for this bike was to set power limits and stay within them. I wanted to average around 195. When you factor in the downhils where I was doing 0 watts and some of the up hills where I would only max out in the 250, an average power of 186 seems like I stayed where I wanted to.

Immediately out of transition, it's pouring and I have no sunglasses on yet since they would just fog up. Heading out of town, you hit a few small hillls and it's relatively bumpy and congested, so I was constantly reaching back to make sure I didn't lose my water and nutrition. Also as people pass you or you pass them, they kick up tons of water onto you, so that was fun for the majority of the ride. I just stayed in my zone and had three other guys who would pass me on the uphillls, then I would pass them on the downhills and we did this for about the first 25 miles until around mile 35 or so, I just noticed one other person ahead of me keeping about the same pace. I think that slowed me down a bit when it gets quiet. I kept my HR in check by maintaining watts. I never pushed too hard on the uphills, so with about 18 miles left, I was averaging over 20mph which was way above what I thought I could do on 190 watts, but the last few hills slowed me down to sub 20mph which was fine.

My stomach still never felt perfect and I was starting to feel a bit icky on the ride back to transition, but it never really got any worse. I came into transition, did a flying dismount, and ran my bike into the transition area.

I just wanted to feel good coming off the bike, so even though I was much slower than normal, it was a successful bike.

If it wasn't a training race, I would have gone harder on the bike.

My shoes and socks were SOAKED! Put them on, grabbed my napalm, and my race number and ran out of transition.

Put shoes and socks in a plastic bag.

Started out feeling great. I noticed Iw as going out too fast, which is a typical mistake. So I deliberately slowed down. I just tried to keep my HR around the high 140s. Average over the run was 152. I really enjoyed this run. I decided to walk the steep hills instead of shuffling up them. So I did that at the long hill in the woods and then at two of the hills in the neighborhood. Looking at my watch early on, I thought I might be able to run a sub 1:50 and be able to go under 5:20 for the race. Which would have been good considering the conditions and the fact that my goal was to stay within my limits. So once in the neighborhood at the top of the hill, I started pushing a little bit. With about 4 miles to go, my stomach was still feeling pretty blah, but I kept pushing and walking the length of each aid station. I should have skipped the last aid station with about .25 to go, but I stopped there and never seemed to really kick it in for the last 400M.

Anyway, up the hill back to the park, I felt pretty good. As I was coming into the finish shoot, there was a guy in front of me and he had his kids join him for the finish, so I slowed down a little bit to let them have their moment and so I would stay out of the picture. It was cute to watch the little ones run through with their Dad, so I was smiling as I came through the finish.

I could have pushed harder, but I wanted to be able to train the following week.

I grabbed some water and a banana. Stretched a little and then walked back to get my bike. Loaded up everything in the car, and headed back to Ohio. I don't like spending my weekends away from the family, so I wanted to get home ASAP.


Challenge didn't skip a beat from the Rev3 race experience. I thought the race was well organized. I love this course and the Challenge/Rev3 experience. SWAG was weak. Tee sweatshirt says triathlon on it in very small letters. It should have a big 70.3 or something on it. Same with the medals. But considering this was a warm up race, the medal and other stuff didn't mean much to me.