I was actually pretty pleased with this swim. I started off a little quicker than normal to try and get some free space. There was a little banging but not too much. As I expected, I had to slow a little as I was tired from the start. For the most part I swam pretty straight the whole time. My biggest mistake was when I turned around the last buoy before heading in, I turned a little too much. With the sun in my eyes, I couldn't see any buoys but I was heading in thw right direction and there were a few other swimmers with me so I thought I was fine. However, cranberry has their buoys pretty close together so when I couldn't see one, I started getting concerned. I looked over to me right and there was the damn buoy. I was pretty much parallel to it so I had to make a 90 degree turn, get to the buoy and get back on track. After that, I actually felt pretty good. For one of the rare moments, I got into a good rythm and actually passed people coming in.

Considering the course was longer than last year and I went off course, I still had pretty much the same time as previous year...which means I swam a lot faster

Once I got out of the water, I immediately felt naseous. I could barely run so I just had to trot into T. After I grabbed my bike, I had to walk all the way to the mount line to keep from hurling.

Enter a duathlon

For the first several miles, I had to go slow to get my stomach settled down. At mile 5, I felt I could finally start picking up the pace and really started moving through the field. Though I wanted to go hard on the bike, I decided to back off a little because of the heat. In end, I had a really good ride. No one passed me the entire ride and was just able to stay smooth and keep the pressure on. I was really hoping to catch Baity but I figured that was not realistic as imagined he had a huge swim advantage and would also push it on the bike.

My biggest problem was that I could not stomach my gatorade. I had three GU's and a decent amount of water but I was really banking on the gatorade and that would not go down at all.

Nothing

Good transition

When I left T2, I thought I was going to have a great run. I flew the first mile and it felt effortless. I thought I would have no problem keeping this up for 6 miles. The like a ton of bricks, my body just shut down and both legs cramped...okay , survival mode once again. I backed off the pace and started walking the aid stations. I saw Chris at either mile 2 or 3...he offfered me some endurlytes (Thanks Chris) but as I have never tried them, I thought it would be a bad idea. The rest of the run was just filled with ups and downs. I would feel good at some points and just miserable later on. By the last half mile, both quads completely locked up and it took everything just to keep running.

As always, this is a well done race and it is great that we get such a large BT gathering.