Swim Stats
Time O/Pos C/Pos G/Pos
24:56.9 24 4 20

I was hoping for a about a minute faster- but, this is about where I am, swim wise. not bad, I'll take it. Water temp was 75- which is pretty warm for a wetsuit. Damn- it took those strippers about 45 minutes to help me get my Wetsuit off. Felt OK. Never really pushed it to where my arms got heavy.

Even with strippers- getting that wetsuit off took a long time. jogged at a reasonable clip over to the bike, but took time to put on socks, gloves, drink gatorade... and then ran out that 100 yards or so out to the clip-in, in my cycling shoes. Pretty brutally slow T1. embarrassingly so.

Time O/Pos Cat/Pos Gender/Pos
Cycle 1:10:40 40 6 35

Bike went well. Rode comfortably hard to fairly hard most of the time. Stayed in aero pretty well, except for all the turns. I think my 2nd loop was faster than my first. Plenty of leg left at the end for a run. I think I could have added 5-10W of power for a more optimal race. road surface was good in places, and then had some pretty nasty expansion cracks in other places. finished all my water by 20miles, and note to self: Black Cherry flavored shot bloks... kinda' disgusting. ugh. only was able to down two bloks.

T2 1:22.2 67OA 7 AG 46 Gender

faster than T1, but still pretty much a mess.

Time O/Pos Cat/Pos Gender/Pos
Run 49:26.6 38 5 32


Came off the bike, having not really killed myself, and my hip wasn't hurting at all. So- let's give it a go. Getting kinda' warm out there at this point, an doused myself with as much water as I could pilfer from those little cups. Having not run for 2-1/2 months, I didn't have much liveliness in the kickers, but they ran. at just over 2 miles, 2 guys in my age group passed me. shit. I really didn't want to run fast, for fear of re-hurting my hip, but my overly competitive spirit said "fuck it" as I knew it would. Chased down one guy, but the other I couldn't catch. The hip started barking at me gently around mile 4. Still hung on as the day got hotter, and the legs got more fatigued. Saw another guy in my age group ahead with about a half mile to go, ran him down and passed him with enough speed differential to hope that he could not give chase. Gave it my best shot out there and am just overjoyed I was able to run at all.

There isn't any parking nearby the Transition, but we managed. Left our bikes in Transition the night before- Hotel shuttle brought us over in the morning, so it all worked out. All the basics covered with nothing special. The goodie bag... was just an energy bar, a bunch of advertisements- so, nothing special there. A T-shirt, race medal. Enough room in transition for all the bikes (not too crowded). And - at least they had all the rows clearly numbered.

Swim: Tempe Town lake- surprisingly, the water seemed cleaner than I expected. Not bad. Big colored swim course markers. Easy to follow.

Bike: I do appreciate having a safe, clear course. They did have the full course closed off to traffic, with people warning you to slow down at every turn (38 of them on the OLY Bike course). There was a Sprint and an Oly happening at the same time- so for the OLY you just do the bike and run courses twice. Plenty of other people to run and ride with- but never felt particularly crowded- except coming into some of the turns where people would bunch up and slow down/or not. One rider next to me said he was pretending it was a 'crit'. Some sections of the course got pretty rough with expansion cracks, and little of it was smooth. Course length 24.2mi- a bit shorter than I was expecting.

Run: No scenery. 2 water stops on each of the 3mi loops. Total course length was a tad over 6.5mi- so, a little long.

Post race: you got a bottle of cold water, bananas, cookies, oranges. It was a pretty hot day, and I went back for another bottle of water... the volunteer asked me if I had one already. Sorry about that- but I had to lie and say 'no'. I paid $155 for this (not including USAT and Active's $16 cut). So- please don't skimp on friggen water. Basic age group awards were steel cups- nothing fancy. So- if you want something creative or special- this isn't the one.

Bottom line: the event was well organized, but nothing special in scenery or the event.