In the words of George Costanza, "The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli!" It was really rough out there and my sighting was terrible. I kept getting taken off course by the current only to have to turn and swim back. My garmin showed I swam over 500 meters extra due to being all over the place. The waves made seeing the buoys extremely difficult. This hurt my overall time. I had planned to be well below 1 hr on the swim. Also, someone hit lap on my watch in the first 100 meters to my entire swim was recorded as T1.

Sight better. I was too trusting on just following the people around me or just going on instinct. I noticed on Strava that they guys with the sub 1hr times also had the shortest runs, closest to 2.4 miles. I learned that it's not enough to be a decent swimmer, as bad sighting can really tack on time.

I didn't want to use wet suit strippers since they were located in the sand and planned to take off my suit in T1. However since I wanted to stand in the shower for a moment to rinse the salt off, I decided to do it right in the shower. It worked really well and the water helped make getting it off really easy.

Nothing.

Holy moly, the wind. It was REALLY windy out there. Florida has a reputation of being an "easy" ironman but between the rough seas and the heavy wind, it was certainly not anything you'd call easy that day. The sustained winds were 20+ with gusts up to 30. There was a slight tail wind out of transition, then about 15 miles of side wind which didn't slow me down much, but I expended a lot of energy staying in control of my bike. Then we turned and it was headwinds for what felt like forever. The course kept turning but we always ended up in a head wind. It was soul sucking to say the least. I did a good job of just keeping my head down and concentrating on maintaining steady power. I didn't have speed on my watch, which was a good thing because I don't want to know how slow I was going at some points. There was a stretch of tail wind coming back which was nice, until we got to the last 5 miles where the wind was coming at about a 45 degree angle through the buildings. It felt like you were coming to a complete stop one moment from the head wind then a gust would come between the buildings and just about knock you off your bike. I was honestly happy to have made it into transition without getting knocked off.

Went pretty well. I had a bit of a crisis of faith at this point. The swim and bike were both pretty rough and I just kept thinking...now I have to run a marathon?!? But once I actually started running through T2 my legs felt good. I took a goo and some water as I went to the run start.

To me this was the big test of the day. I wanted nothing more than to pace this properly and have a solid steady run. I had only my HR on my watch and kept it between 125-130 for miles 1-22. At mile 22 my plan was to just go for it. I felt like I was holding back the entire run, which I think was good. At mile 22 I started to go and by mile 23 I wasn't feeling hot. I had been having trouble eating and drinking without stomach cramps and at this point I decided just to run it in without stopping (I was walking all the stations up to this point). That first mile of gunning it did not sit well however and I was really struggling. That's when I saw my brother who was just starting his run. He was in the hospital with a stomach virus up until the morning before the race. For some insane reason, he decided to start the race anyway which to me was pretty bad @$$, however I never thought he'd make it past the swim. When I saw him he was actually running too, not just walking it. That really inspired me. If he could make it that far on no solid food for the previous two days, I could run the last 3.2 miles. I took a minute to give him a hug and took off. I finished strong and felt pretty good crossing the line.

I didn't feel so hot once the adrenaline wore off and had to sit on a bench for a couple minutes and take in some water. I drank some more water and ate some pizza then headed to the room for a shower. After that I was feeling pretty good, so more pizza and straight to the beer! I went down with my family to cheer on my brother and have a couple more drinks. We saw him after his first loop however that was all he could do. His stomach was causing him too many issues. Still, he made it surprisingly far given the circumstances.