OK, so no warmup, not good. But we stood in line according to number and then got 5 seconds to walk and jump in. This was the nicest, cleanest pool I've ever been in. For. Real.

Overall, I think I seeded myself pretty well, but man I hate these swims because other people DONT seed themselves well. I passed the guy ahead of me in the first 50m. Then the guy behind me was up my rear (and grabbed my ankle!). I hate when people draft off of me as well, so I kept speeding up, which threw off my breathing patterns/heart rate. I seriously hate people drafting me, and I refuse to cooperate with it.



Learn to not be a spaz with other people...not have someone grab my ankle...

No idea where I am in my AG, not enough spare brain cells to figure it out. HUUUUGE AG though. Not used to that one.

um, so yea, someone crammed their stuff into my space, and it was a tight change because 3 people side by side were transitioning at the same time. The girl next to me was taking her sweet time. Rather than cleaning my feet off, I decided to be speedy and just get the damn shoes on and go, gravel and all.

Dry off. Clean feet off.

Ooookaaayy, so there are some super fast downhills in this race, which was GREAT. But about halfway through I realized...oh F*ck, I have to go back UP them.

The road surface was really rough too, hard to find "good" pavement without being almost over the center line. Hard to pass people too because we were all trying to find the good legal pavement without being over the line. Saw lots of bad passing, lots of drafting, lots of pain pain pain.

About halfway through, I started singing..

"i'm bringing spandex back..."

and then I started to remember Welshy's IM report and "I'm f*cking Wahoo bitches, out of my way", and I giggled to myself. It got me through it.



GET MY BUTT ON THE BIKE MORE!

I'm coming on from the bike, and there's lots of people by the mount line, so I say.."ok, lets see if I can do this without falling on my face...eeh..ooo, ok ok ok! Annnnd we're good!" so moving dismount was good. ..the walking, was not. I almost fell on my face coming into transition because i slipped on my cleats. Graceful, really.

And then I see that my T2 area is ...well...not really the way I left it.

umm, sir, I'd appreciate it if you didn't set your FLOOR PUMP across my stuff...wait...where's my shoe?

umm umm umm!! Please don't break my googles ! aaaaaaahh!

Ok, so I finally get into my space, and it's more like a transition disaster area now...get my stuff laced up and on, number on the front, annnd we're good.

um, not be clumsy. not have peoples crap all over my stuff.

Soo, first mile was not so fun. My stomach was not so happy (hint: indian food and pizza in the same day is NOT a good idea). But it settled down after mile 1 and I got down to it. Lots of encouragement from bikers, lots of singing. I saw 2 guys who swim every morning during my shift during the race, and they gave me high fives! It made me smile. I felt AWESOME on this run, true story.

not a damn thing

yayyy finish! Got a cold towel and a water bottle from the girls at the finish, turned in my chip, found the fiance, put the bike away, and went to get a shower. It was nice to have a locker room to change into.


Lack of training
first race of the season
lack of being Wahoo.


After pineman last year, I was worried about doing another HFP race, but this one was great. Everything was on time, there was plenty of food, the volunteers were great too.