What an awesome swim I had! The harder I swam, the better I felt. I don't know if it was the cold water or what, but this was the best swim I've ever had. I followed Glenn's lead on positioning at the start and got on the outside and kind of middle/front. Man, the water was COLD! First thing I did was warm up the inside of my wetsuit - that sure felt good. I was hoping to stay to the outside all the way to the first bouy to avoid the initial mayhem. This worked well, but I took it too wide which probably cost me a little time. I had absolutely no contact in the first 100 yards so I guess it worked. Half way through I was passing people like crazy and started looking around and didn't see anyone from my wave and was thinking "what the heck is going on?" Every few minutes I just cranked it up another notch and just felt phenomenal. I felt like I was flying. Next thing I knew my hands were hitting the bottom and it was over. I stood up and looked at my watch and knew I had a great swim even though it was short. There were no blue caps from my wave around. I was 1st in my AG and 2nd in my wave of M30-39.

Absolutely nothing. This was all I had mentally and physically. The stars must have been aligned for me.

This is estimated since they didn't take transition splits and I didn't get them on my watch. This was the fastest T1 I've ever had. My wetsuit snapped off so easily I couldn't believe it. I put my helmet on got on my way. I had a really good position in transition so it was just 20 feet or so to the bike exit.

Nothing.

My HR was through the roof when my HRM finally started working a few minutes into the bike. I went out at around 22-23 mph and my HR wasn't coming down. My game plan for this entire race was to not focus on HR so much and just go hard. I'm always sweating my HR on the bike and trying to get it down to cycling range quickly. Today I wanted to see what would happen if I pushed the bike. Overall, I thought my time was slow for the effort I put out, but this was the hardest I've ever ridden in a race. I passed a bunch of people that were mostly on road bikes and didn't see anyone around that looked my age. Very weird. I thought for sure the hammerheads would start blowing by me about half way into the bike, but they never caught up. I just kept pushing and gave it all I had. I just kept telling myself that this was the last race of the season and there's absolutely no reason to hold anything back. I was hoping for something in the 21mph range, but I guess the wind or the cold wind made it tougher. I still had a really good ride. I could only manage 17-18mph on the headwind stretches.

Nothing. I know I would have had a bad run if I had ridden any harder.

Again, this is estimated and I backed it out of my bike time. This was fast and possibly even faster than 30". I went without socks, so literally, I just slipped my shoes on and took off. I clipped my race number belt on while I was running. I wish they took transition splits because I would like to see how I ranked here.

nothing

Game plan here was to go hard, but save something for the way home. I did watch my HR here a little and kept the first 1.5 miles in high z3/lowz4. I was going to open it up a little with a mile to go. I was having a great run and saw Glenn and Shelly on their way back. It always gives me a boost to see friends on the run. They both looked really strong and were smiling. With about a mile to go, a guy passes me with authority and I figured there was only 7-8 minutes of running left for me so I got on his heels and went with him. He eased up and said hi and said he was tired of running alone. I gave him a hard time for backing off because I was using him as my rabbit. We ran together until the bridge (about a 1/4 mile out) and I planned on passing him fast as soon as we got off the bridge. I let it rip and he went with me. He got in front of me before the last turn and barely beat me in which was a bummer, but he really helped to motivate me and made the final sprint fun.

Nothing. I thought I might crack 24 minutes, but I gave it 110%.

Stood around talking with Glenn and Shelly. Snapped a couple pictures of Brenda coming in looking strong. Last year I hit the road right after the race and missed seeing Glenn pick up his hardware. I wasn't going to miss it again this year and Shelly was going to place well so I hung around so I could cheer for them. Awards were going slow so I walked over to look at the results, but could only get close enough to see that I finished 27th overall. Wow - I couldn't believe it. Then, as I was walking back over toward where everyone was standing, they called my name as second in my AG. Holy Cow! In total disbelief, I went up and got my medal. I still can't believe it. I have to admit that I feel awfully strange winning a medal when I get my butt kicked by someone who doesn't place in their AG. That doesn't seem right. I guess it just goes to show that it's all about who shows up on race day, or in my case, who doesn't show up! I guess all the fast M30-34ers were at Cape Henlopen. It was so awesome to have my parents, Marianne, Sherrie and Maddie there. Triathlon wouldn't be half as much fun if it weren't for friends and family.


This is absolutely my favorite race of the year. Hats off to the RD for making the very difficult decision of moving the race to Sunday. Everything was very well organized and relaxed. What a great way to end the year.