The swim time included climbing out of the pool and running out of the building to the TA. No "Olympic Style" dive start this time. Participants had to step on the starting mat, jump into the pool and push off from the wall to start. I was hoping to do 4:55 for 250 yards, which I clocked in my trainings. First lap was fine.
By 75 yard, I felt short of breath. There is NO WAY I would have panicked. Swimming is my strongest and I can regularly do 500 or even 1000 non-stop. I thought it might be due to allergy. Saw the guy in front pulled away.
125y. I could hear my grasping of breath. WTF?? Keep convincing myself it was supposed to be short and easy.
200y. Felt the current from the girl behind me. She didn't touched me, but I knew she was close behind. I was NOT going to let her pass. Sped up.
250y - as I exited the pool, the girl was about one body-length from the end wall. That was close.

Warm up a bit before the start?
I am very disappointed with my swim. The exit with grabbing towels and stuff shouldn't take that long. May be 30 seconds -
mistake #3 here: kept forgetting to press the timer to get exact splits - actual swim time maybe 5:16, 20 seconds slower than I had hoped.

T1 time included in swim time.
Wiped off the moisture while running out of the building. Forgot to remove swim cap/goggles while running - lost 2 seconds here. Still pretty difficult to put on the t-shirt on the semi-dry body. Difficult to put socks on wet feet - lost 5 seconds here.

Forget about the slippers. Didn't help in any way. Spend some time to dry feet, instead of spending time to dry my body.

The course was pretty tough. Lots of up and downs at the "neck" where we had to make 3 loops. There was a strech of the road - half of it was black, apparently newly paved. But it was BUMPIER than the older section. The first time I rode on that black area I was jumping all over the place and thought I had a flat. On the 2nd and 3rd loop I rode on the lighter area and was ok.

DZ and Ontherun: hey I didn't brake when going down hill.


Ride more and need to practice fast turning. The re-entering of the loop was a 300 degree left turn. I had to slow waaayyy down to make that turn.

Was a little disappointed to get less than 16 mph. But bike time includes T2 so I forgive myself.

T2 time was included in the bike time. Dismounted and pushed the bike uphill to rack area. I was slow running on my cleats. And I got to the WRONG ROW of racks. Wasted who knows how long there.

Take off shoes at dismount. Make sure I know where my rack is.

Somehow I thought it was a 3 mile run. That was how I got to set my goal for 1:15.

Didn't drink enough on the bike and at 1/2 mile I had some side pain. Tried to focus on breathing and relax my diaphram. Got some water at the stations. During the run I was wheezing like a flute. Did a meditation thing - inhale at 4 counts, exhale at 4 counts. By mile 1 I felt more relaxed. Was a bit surprised to realize it was a 3.5 mile course. Added 5 minutes to my goal and tried to shoot for 1:20. Sped up a bit.

At the end of the run, saw lots of TriFurians cheering. Got carried away (seems to happen in every race) and borke into a sprint. Almost ran into the bike exit and heard the TriFurians yelled "left left left!!" Lost 2 seconds here. ;) Finished seeing 1:20 overall time on my watch.

Happy to see I could keep a ~9:30 min/mile pace.

Hung out with the TriFurians. Cheered for them.

Tried to look for BTers. The only BTer I saw was SunnyS, who racked a few places before me.


Didn't take the race seriously? ;)


First time completing the course - last year was a relay with Nikki, I did the swim and bike.

Very disappointing swim, OK bike ride, good run. The race got progressively better. :)