For the first time I outclassed most of the people around me. Meaning there were a lot of sandbaggers in my group with regards to their estimated swim time. I was catching up to a lot of swimmers, even passed several. The walls were crazy, with bodies stacking up to rest and duck under the lane dividers, then to rest some more. I actually felt pretty strong and solid; having the wall to push off made a nice difference. Tried to focus on form and staying long, at least until I got stacked up with the rest of the swimmers. Even with all of that my time was better than expected.

Starting to think I might need to sandbag a little bit myself, mark down a swim estimate of 6:15 or 6:30.

Reasonable transition. Went sockless so just had to stick my feet in the shoes. Most of this was the run from the pool to my spot near the back.

Nothing. Good transition.

Pretty good bike ride, except for not being able to see very well due to misty conditions. Both inner and outer lenses stayed foggy/misty the whole ride and my reaching up to wipe them off made for vision that was akin to looking through a rain-streaked window. Because of that I didn't get too crazy at turns or on downhills. Kept the pace comfortable throughout, save for a little bit on the uphills. Lost probably 30-45 seconds when I misunderstood one of the course marshals telling me to stay left...I went way left, into the oncoming lane. And this on the second loop, so what the heck was I thinking??!! Had to stop, even unclip, practically dismount, to move back into position to get going again. Dumb-assed mistake, but it didn't make any difference in age group placing.

Nothing; pleased overall.

Fairly quick transition here too. Ran sockless, so was an easy pull of the running shoes onto my feet then grabbing hat and belt and taking off. Majority of time here is likely the run into transition and racking bike.

Probably nothing...hard to see much more improvement here.

Felt good throughout the run, didn't play any mind games, just tried to maintain a reasonable pace, slowing a bit to maintain effort when going uphill and increasing pace on downhills. Kicked it up last .15 or so. So was surprised to see a slightly slower run than Luck of the Irish a couple weeks ago, where I felt a lot worse during the run.

I felt like this was a good run, solid effort, so...not sure what to do differently. Very easy to say more training, or more intervals, but will that make a difference? Dont' know, but I'll probably try it, and try not to overdo it.

Very blown at the end, so a good effort. Recovered by walking around with a bottle of water until normalcy returned.


Starting to believe my run is becoming the problem, at least on these shorter races where the swim doens't play as large a role. My percentile was slightly worse on the run that it was on the swim, which is highly unusual for me. Speaks to trying to improve the run leg, but I'm not sure how much improvement a soon-to-be 60 year old can expect to realize.


I'd give this race a 5 were it not for the weirdness in my split times. Overall time agrees with Garmin, but official race times are way off on the swim and the bike. Shows 9:33 on the swim, which is absolutely impossible (Garmin shows 6:51, no way I missed my button pushes by that much). Originally assumed my swim included T1, as I had no T1 time when I first reviewed results. Now, a T1 time has been inserted, swim time remains unchanged, and my bike results have improved by over two minutes (which - as much as I fervently wish otherwise - is also absolutely impossible). All that said, DAR puts on awesome races that are just a ton of fun, with an overall atmosphere that is hard to beat. Looking forward to Texasman in a month.