The lake was so damn murky, I literally couldn't see my outstretched hand in front of my face. Also, the waves were only 3 minutes apart. This caused me to catch at least 4 waves...which sucked. I bilateral breath and only site every 8 strokes. So before I would have a chance to pop up and see where I was and who was ahead of me...I would literally be on top of someone. That totally sucked and killed my momentum. I did that at least 5 times. I will say though that even with that, I felt I had a really strong swim and my sighting was on point! There were a few moments where people would swim into me and instead of backing down, I would just pull harder and kick my way to freedom. All in all, it was a great swim!

Maybe pull harder???

I love transitions, I do. I felt great in T1...no diziness from the swimm since I kicked like hell the last 300.

Nothing

So I hopped onto bike and imdiedatly my aerobottle comes shaking loose. WTF!?! I tried as hard as I could to get it re-attached and found myself actually holding onto it to keep from falling off. I did that for about a mile till I said to hell with it and chucked it into a field. After that, I settled in to an awesome groove. I really focused on shifting properly and keeping my cadence at 95. On the down hills, I put that bugger into hardest gear and kicked it out. Oddly, not many people were taking advantage of the downhills and were using it for rest and coasting time. I felt really strong on the bike, and got worried I would fry my legs, but figured I should just go for it. I had 3 gels while on bike and half my gaterade. I stopped drinking with about 4 miles to go. I felt the best I ever have on the bike today.

Relax a little more faster. I was just too worked up for the first 3 miles with all the turns and the areobottle incident. I wasn't treating it like a race.

God I really love transitions. This time I had unlatched my shoes and left them on pedals while I ran into transition barefoot. This greatly helped me get the feeling back into my numb feet. Ran out of T2 while putting visor and bib on.

nothing at all

Well, here is where I lost it. I wouldn't go far as to say the wheels came off...but I was definetly hoping to do better on the run. My hydration was good, plan was to take some drink at every station and I did. I also dumped alot of H2O on myself to keep cool. Unfortunatly, I had only logged about 20 miles of running the past month due to my knee injury. And it showed. My knee did flair up, which caused me to stop and walk a few times. Also, mentally I just couldn't, or didn't want to push myself. I just did not want to run. I need to find a way to push through this. Towards the end, I had picked my pace up a bit and found my knee pain almost went away (note to self, run faster and knee doesn't hurt!) I then sprinted in to the finish. After I crossed finish line I began to dry heave and fell over. Luckily the medical folks were right there and dumped gallons of water on me, some went in my mouth, which I was sooo grateful for!

Not much I can do differently. I can't fix my knee until the fall, so the pain will be there until then. I guess I would just find a way to mentally push myself harder.

I walked over to swim start to get my t-shirt back, which was about 1/4 mile. It felt good to walk around in the sun. I had a few pieces of tomato pie, but was way more interested in the tri-colored water ice....YUM!!! I opted out of the massage cuz I just wanted to get home...wish I had got one though.


My knee pain kept me from training like I wanted to over the past month, so my engine wasn't where I had hoped it would be. Also, the knee pain kept me from performing the way I had hoped during the run portion. Otherwise, I hit all my projected goals for my first Olympic tri.


I really loved this race from start to finish. I pused myself pretty hard, which I wanted to do. I'm going to work harder on breaking down the mental barriers I have so I can push even harder in the future. I'm happy with my overall performance and really look forward to more olympic ditsance races.