this was my most comfortable swim ever. i took a couple laps early on to warm up and i swear the water just felt different. i have been doing the new things that i learned at the pool the other night and i don't know if its all in my mind but i feel better and different in the water, at least today. anyway......the race started really late, like maybe thirty to forty minutes because of fog. its a good damned thing i realized once i saw the bike course. to start the guy was watching a clock and would give you a "...3,2,1, go" and you would jump in feet first and come up swimming. i caught the guy right in front of me almost immediately, like at 40 meters. i hit his toes accidently like 10 times, things look farther away in the water. accidently or no, he didn't let me by at the wall like i was expecting and i had to walk behind him a few times so i wouldn't be all up on him. i even waited at the wall once for about 2-3 seconds to let him get some space. finally, disgusted i caught him at the wall and said "LET ME GO BY" and he did. once again, almost immediately i caught this enormous man who i had earlier privately wondered about the accuracy of his seeding. i didn't want to go throuhg the getting stuck thing again so i just pulled out into the fast lane and swam by him. i swear it seemed like his ass sped up but it may have been my imagination. now with those guys behind me i had my own built in roadblock for people catching me so i was able to let up and finish.

nothing, cept maybe seed myself faster, i may have hit my target of 5:45 without all that walking and waiting.

despite a swim that i thought was good, i was a bit dizzy in T1. couldn't worry about it so i didn't.

this was a bear. biking is usually my favorite part of these races but not this time. we were riding on the FREEWAY! had i mentioned that? the good part was that it was smooth, clean, and had some sweet downhills, including one really really long one that had me running at over 35mph for a long time. maybe someone else can say but i think i was going downhill for at least 90 seconds or more. what goes down must go up and the reverse was horrible. honestly it wasn't really that bad but i just didn't have alot of power and couldn't go as fast as i like to. i felt like an electric drill with a bad charge, you know, it will spin fast just fine as long as theres no load but try to put in a screw and it stops. well, i didn't stop and i still caught some people but i got passed by three people and i don't usually get passed on the bike. this was a hard for me considering what i have been able to do in the past.

this ride would have been scary if i had taken the time to think about it. we rode down several exits, meaning we had to cross several exit ramps. can you imagine looking over your shoulder for cars to make sure you don't get hit by someone getting off the freeway?

train for hills and wind, there wasn't any wind but i'm just as terrible at it.

i almost ran off without my shoes. that would have lasted like three steps.

nothing except man-up and get out faster. i was dreading the run after that leg sizzling group of hills.

this was my best triathlon run to date. my legs did not want to run but i made them. today was the first time i never walked. in all my previous three i had to walk, or, i let myself walk. today was different. as bad as they felt i wouldn't give in and then something kinda cool happened, they loosened up. all of a sudden i could run. not really fast but way faster than before and faster than many of my practice runs. its funny, i felt like i was moving slow but the footpod told me i was keeping a good pace, beween 8 and 8 1/2 minutes. i liked that. not only did i feel like i was moving slow but the people going past me looked slow too, there were only about 5 but they all counted and i knew two of them. looking at the results i see that they had very respectable paces but it sure does look different in practice. and despite the fact that they LOOKED slow, there was no amount of willing or pushing that would let me keep up.

nothing.

immediately walked to find something to drink and started looking for food.


running off the bike wasn't bad actually once i got going. it was my fastest triathlon 5K to date so i can't really fuss. i did want to do better though. riding on the hills is probably what hurt me the most.


even though just about all my answers were bad i don't think it was a bad race. there just wasn't enough of anything. the only cops were at turns, i would have liked to see some officers on the freeway to keep us from getting hit by cars. as soon as i crossed the finish line i was looking for my ice cold towel and they didn't have them. so i went off looking for pizza and beer, was none. there were lots of oranges though and i tore into them. i was ravenous. we had to wait for baked potatos to be set up and ready. i'm used to more drink stations too, there were not as many. as far as the course being too hard, thats not because there was something wrong with the course, it was that i just wasn't ready for it.