This was a very uneventful swim. There was little bumping and shoving compared to several previous swims. The pack separated early and stayed consistent throughout.

Get a better starting point and stay to the outside.

Not much to say. When you swim in your whole race outfit, transition times are faster. Starting with the shoes on the bike is key.

Not much of anything. I suppose I could always run faster through the transition area!

Great bike course. The volunteer support was great, especially at the intersection where first-loopers and second-loopers met up. The flatness of the course was very conducive to big chainring spinning for high speed. I'm glad I brought my 11-23 cassette. It's fun coming out onto the bike course in the first wave because it's not overly crowded, and you know that everyone you pass is someone in your age group whom you're looking to beat.

I would have paid a bit better attention at the end of the bike leg. I overshot the turn into the bike-in and cost myself about 10-15 seconds (and two overall places) by missing it.

I expected that my T2 placing would be better than 86th overall. Fifty seconds seemed pretty fast for this transition set up. I guess the fact that our AG's rack was a good distance from the run start hurt my comparative time. Regardless, it was still pretty fast for me.

Not much to change except to run a bit faster.

This was one of my better runs. With 6:28 splits, I was very pleased, especially given how strong I felt after doing two 53-mile bike rides on Friday and Saturday before the race. Although two guys ran me down, I don't think I ever really fell off the pace too badly.

Figure out some way to keep from getting passed in the last 150 meters. That's the second race in a row!

I just walked around the race area drinking water, Accelerade, and Coke. Had a couple of pieces of pizza and a banana, too.



The guys at Out Loud put on a great race. I did the Iron Star Half-iron distance race last October and it was equally well-run.