No idea of my time of course, but I think it was pretty good, once I hit the halfway point, there were a lot less people in my wave around and a lot more people from the two waves ahead of me. Kept getting smacked by some woman doing backstroke. Tried to avoid the slower men. Over all, pretty pleased with the swim. I think I can guesstimate my time off of Amy b/c I came out of the water not too long after her.

Swim-wise, nothing, really. Edited to add - my swim must not have been too off. Amy finished in just over 15 minutes and apparently, I came out about a minute behind her. So that's good.

T1 was a semi-mess. Had a teeny bit of trouble getting out of my wetsuit. Worst part of T1 (or rather the bike course, I guess, since it happened after the timing mat) was that my front brake, which I had CHECKED pre-race to make sure it was not rubbing, was rubbing. So I had to stop and fix it. And then try to clip in, going uphill. Yeah, not so much. So I had to run the damn bike up the hill.

Nothing - stupid brake was messed up.

Half sucked and almost gave up. Brake was still rubbing and something was rattling on my bike - turns out the bottle cage was loose. So I tossed my water bottle to stop the noise, because let's face it, I can't drink and ride anyway, so the fact that I even bring it is laughable. First two rather large downhills, then all gradually uphill for the next 5 miles to the turnaround. Literally - I was barely managing 12 mph. Luckily, that meant that after the turnaround, it was mostly downhill and I managed to pick up some good speed. Then we had to climb the hills again. And there was one more Luray-caliber downhill. Ugh. Halfway through the bike, I happened to look down and realized that my timing chip was gone. Fuck.

Move to a place that is flat.

T2 was basically wasted trying to find my timing chip. I was hoping that it had just slipped off with my wetsuit and although I'd have to T1, bike and T2 split, I could carry it with me and get my run and overall times. But it wasn't there.

Not lose my damn chip.

Oh my god. I hate hills. The downhills were fine, but it was like a rollercoaster, tons of long, gradual climbs that I just cannot do well. And I was pissed about my timing chip and I had to pee. So I just stuck it out and tried not to die. The first thing we did was climb a big hill, and since it was an out and back, going down it was the last thing we did. I hauled ASS down that thing - I literally though that my legs were going to come out from under me. Full-on sprint down and through the finish chute, yelling "Number 17!!! I LOST MY CHIP!!!"

Run hills. Lots and lots of hills.

So pissed about my chip, asked officials if they'd been able to at least get an overall time for me, which they did. Told them I lost my chip. Went into the lake to cool off - almost in tears at this point - I'm floating there and some guy up on the dock says, to his daughter playing in the water on the boat ramp "Hey, there's a chip down there!" So I immediately pounce on it and go running back up to the finish tent so they can check to see if it's mine (these chips did not have numbers on them). Luckily, it was, so I do not owe Set-up $30.

Post-race food, however, was AWESOME. BBQ...mmm...and bluegrass music. Gotta love the country.


Everything that went wrong with this race, did. I really, really need to find some places to train that have REAL hills, esp. for biking. There are neighborhoods nearby that I can run in.



This is a pretty good race, if you have the hills. Anyone could fly on the second half of that bike course and at least it somewhat made up for my time sucking. The run was definitely brutal though - the worst I've had to do.