Started on the outside and found myself on the inside after the first few hundred yards. No issues with that as I was sighting off of those on my outside. From about 100yds to 400yds felt awful – from not warming up enough. Pushed through it and found my rhythm by the first buoy and had no issues with pace/feel after that. In fact, I could have kept going, which is a clear indicator that I should have pushed the pace a bit more. According to my garmin, I was out of the water in 25:48.

The course had orange and yellow buoys (with the yellows being situated a bit outside of the orange lines). I thought yellows were to use for sighting while we only had to go around the orange, but everyone was keeping all the buoys on their left so I just followed.

Grabbed some feet throughout this swim but nothing consistent. Got my goggles knocked off just as I made my final turn (got shouldered). No issues at all with that, just turned on my back and resealed them).

In previous races I had been feeling some tightness in my upper arms and shoulders in this wetsuit. I had pulled my sleeves well up on my forearms and didn’t have any discomfort.

Definitely warm up better so the first quarter of the race doesn’t make me feel like I’m going to blow up in my wetsuit.
Push the pace.
Focus harder to grab some feet.

Long run from the lake to T1. Garmin says 0.25mi. And my total T1 was 4m5s, taking me 2m15s to make the quarter mile run. Small steps, high cadence. Didn’t push it at all and was pretty much going with the flow.

Not much. Could have shaved a few seconds off the run to T1 and the changing in T1, but this was fairly smooth.

Target was no more than 5bpm under LT. Was in high z4 for the first half, but after the hills could never get my HR back up (legs were screaming – even before the hills) – average steady z3 for the second half. This is consistent with my HIM race last year where my body said ‘no mas’ to maintaining my target effort.

Had about 24oz of g-ade during the ride and grabbed a few oz’s of water at the second aid station (~mile 20).

I got passed by A LOT of racers on the bike (mainly from the second wave). This was discouraging, but my target pace was NLT 20mph and wanted to race my race.

Took the downhills pretty hard – maxed at 42.1mph in aero position on the first big downhill. I had repositioned the cages on my xlab the night before (positioning the bottles more upright). As I was starting this downhill I shifted way back in the saddle and something nudged me – I about fell off my bike, then realized it was my bottles and not someone bumping me.

Oh yeah. Cadence not working again. I changed the battery out before this race hoping that would solve the issue. This seems only to work about 75% of the time – not acceptable. I’ll have to send it back. I’m getting tired of this.

Maybe more water. Not sure why it was a struggle the second half to keep my hr up – more conditioning I guess.

Could have been faster. Had taken my speed laces off for this race and had a bit of trouble tightening these laces and tying, but I wasn’t in a big hurry to get out on the run course because I knew it was going to be a struggle.

I was targeting 7min/mi, planning to build into this. The first half I was close to this but couldn’t sustain the pace. As awful as my legs felt, my stomach and GI took precedence. I hit water at each aid station (g-ade at the second). This I believe was the most painful run I’ve ever experienced (even more so than my marathons I’ve run). Not sure why exactly but I’ll be happy not to experience this again. I couldn’t wait to be done with this run.

Although it felt like I completely bombed the run I only missed my realistic target time by 3 min (which I guess is a lot over a 10k).

Not sure what I could have done. Maybe if I focused more mentally I could have pushed the pace a bit more, or maybe took a walk break. My HR never came close to z5 – which is where I wanted to build to for the last few miles. I think the damage had been done before getting to the run.

a lot of water and resting in the shade. moving very slowly and was pretty much useless the rest of the day. Had to make an emergency pit stop at the walmart restroom on the way out of town (Finch sceen from American Pie)


something. I'm confident that I have the ability to ride/run faster. I'm looking forward to figuring it all out......

My very realistic goal for this race was to break 2h 45m. I wasn’t far off and I know I can do it once I am able to sustain a high z4 bike effort for an entire race and figure out how to make sure I can race the run discipline.


Great race! Well-run. Strong competitors. Great, challenging course and awesome post-race food/venue.