Good swim. After 1st buoy headed off course a little towards the yellow buoy. Probably cost me about 25 yards. Stopped once due to a swimmer in distress. He was having a problem with goggles and I didnt stick around since that wasn't all that serious. Overall a great swim.

Nothing.

Slow transition. Coming out of the water there was about a 100 yard run in the soft sand, then up a short hill to the transition. I was exhausted and my heartrate was high.

Nothing

I forgot how hard this course was. Right out of the transition area is uphill a few hundred yards and then up a steep golf cart path where you have to be in the lowest gear. By the time I got to the top my heart was racing and I didnt know how I would finish the ride if that kept up. The big hill is about 1/5 mile at a steep grade. My gearing wasn't set up for this and I hadn't been on a hill in about a year. My heart was pumping at the top. After that there were a lot more hills but not as long. The second lap was better since I knew what was coming.

Train on hills.

Slow getting socks on.

Run without socks. I forgot to bring powder so I ran with socks.

I forgot how hilly the course is. I stopped once for about 5 seconds coming back and also on the steep hill about 1/4 mile from the finish. It was so steep that it didn't matter whether I ran or walked. I dehydrated at about mile 4. My mouth was extremely dry. Fortunately there were several water stops with ice cold sponges.

Nothing.

Walk around, drink water.


Training in hilly areas.


This is a great race because of the location, volunteers and low number of entries.

This was my best race ever. I wasn't sure that my conditioning was up to an olympic of this difficulty. In my dreams I wanted to do 3:08 and beat that by almost 2 minutes. I was :13 seconds from hardware - slow transition putting on socks, missed one turn on the run. Mentally I have never been tougher. The run was a killer and many times I wanted to quit but kept going and even sprinted the last few hundred yards.