The swim left something to be desired. While the focusing on going slow + breathing the first 100 yds went well, I let my HR spike at the typical bottleneck at the first turn buoy ... which was more like bar room fight than anything else.

While not out of control and I could have swam through it, R was high enough that I felt it in my chest. So I flipped over to sweet spot to get my HR down as I did not want to cook myself on the swim.


I concentrated on going slow through the swim, reminding myself that the difference for me between 1:45/100 vs. 2:00/100 was not great in time savings, but cost a lot in energy expended. Looking back, I did too good of a job at slacking off.

Felt a little disorientated coming off the swim, which probably contributed to the dismal time posted ... need to soak my tri-shorts in gasoline ...

Strike a match.

Bike was great ... quickly got into my groove by following a friend from TNT who is also a strong cyclist (following more than three bike lengths, of course). We passed many on the course ... then he went into a 90* turn too hot and then performed one of the best recoveries on a bicycle I have seen by riding over a sloped curb, through the grass and then back onto a circular concrete driveway w/o missing a beat.

It was almost on par with the Armstrong's fabled recovery on the descent in TdF ... I would have splattered myself, creating a trench with my face through the grass only to be stopped by the concrete driveway.

Was only passed by one guy throughout the ride, a black guy built like Michael Johnson on a cool red Softride with a Renn disc wheel.

While it was a relatively short course, I probably did not hydrate as well as I should have ... despite having the aerodrink in front of me. I did remember to take a Gu halfway through just to be sure that I did not crash during the run/after the race.

Not sure what the heck I did that took that much time ...

Run went reasonably well for a prolonged red-line sprint ... funny how no matter the distance I always wonder 1/2 way through it whether the run course is EVER going to end.

Was passed by 2 people - one ridiculously fast guy in my AG who was probably in another zip code before I even reached the half way point and a 25 yr old girl (re-passed her at the 2.2 mi mark as she clearly blew up).

I walked the two water stops for a total of :10 seconds each in an effort to get my HR down ... to no avail. Despite the pain in my lungs and the body screaming to/tempting myself with the thoughts of stopping, I chugged on to the final stretch where I saw my TNT/CdA peeps cheering folks in ... gave enough of a boost to sprint the final 200 yds.

Not sure that I could have dug deeper as 7:45/mi is a good pace for me ... so I would have to say prepare better. More hydration may have helped.

I did do a PB on the 5k, but this was only my second 5k as I have opted to train for 10k distances.

Sprinted so hard at the end that I wobbled myself to the chip strap lady and leaned on her heavily as she took that @#$%^ thing off. (The strap was too big and flapped during the warm up swim so I looped it around itself perpendicuarly ... and it rubbed the skin raw.


Lack of consistent training, lack of speed work, dearth of racing since Gulf Coast in May and lack of experience at this length.

One thing in particular that sticks out is that my transition times stink! I lost at least 1:30-2:30 in transition compared to some of my friends. I need to get better at this.

Sprint distances are fun ... but sprinting for 1:15 is much different than trying to pace yourself through an Oly or HIM. This is a completely different, red-lining animal - and fun!


One of the best run races I've been to ... there was a problem with the computer program + timing chip data that truncated the awards ceremenoy, but they handled it in stride. The volunteer support was absolutely incredible.

Couple of friends won hardware: 3rd fastest women's time + AG as well as top 10 AG, etc. Looking forward to doing this race again next year.