Started 2nd "row" from front, right in the middle. This was a wade start, with all 165 starting at the same time. I was feeling fairly calm and confident. I felt like I could definitely beat last year's time mostly with the fact that my stroke has improved so much. I just wish it was possible to practice swimming in such a crowded atmosphere. I think I need to recruit several of us BTer's to go to the lake and just swim all on top of each other, cutting each other off and elbowing each other, all while trying to site and stay straight.

The swim went well in that I felt pretty strong most of the time and I never had much of a problem staying on target! Hooray for me! No kayaker this year telling me to go right! I even tried drafting off of a couple people, but that never lasted too long. I do think I got some benefit off of it. I've never tried to consciously draft in a race before.

Things that didn't go so well: I flat out choked on water 2 times. One time was while trying to site and somebody kicked water at just the right time into my face. The other time was when a guy just cut me right off and it startled me enough that I jerked my head back and took a big inhale of water. That dude had a serious issue with staying straight. I was not the problem there. And the funny thing was that it wasn't at the start, it was several hundred meters out where it wasn't that crowded. Oh well.

I made the 2 turns nicely. The sun was clouded over which helped tremendously. After the turn to go back to shore I could tell things were going wrong - I was losing my swim cap off of my head! Uh oh. The night before at the carbo-load dinner I had given Tyler a free gel bottle they were giving away. Of course Bryn wanted to know what I had for her. My quick mommy-thinking blurted out "You can have my swim cap after the race tomorrow." When I realized I was surely going to lose it, I had to think fast. I swiped it off of my head and held it by my thumb in my left hand and swam like that for awhile. But that really began to feel inefficient, so I took a second or two to stuff it into the front of my wetsuit. Problem solved! I was thanking my lucky stars that I had put my hair into a ponytail before putting the cap on so my hair wasn't terribly in my face, but it was a factor and made it harder for me to site. I just tried to keep following other pink swim caps.

After all of this, I was certain I'd not even come close to beating my time, but I was OK with that. I felt I had at least swam better. I was more relaxed and felt strong. I didn't know until I'd gotten home and checked the results that I'd actually beaten last year's time by 2 whole seconds!!! :)

Do a better job of putting my cap on!! I put my goggles on under my cap so I wouldn't get them kicked off. Because of that, I hadn't put the cap on just right. I'm serious about all of us getting together and beating the crap out of each other in the water for practice.

Tried to take my time in order to get my HR under control. I still was 24 seconds faster than last year. I usually have to sit down to get my wetsuit off my feet. Putting on bike shoes is easy especially since I don't ride with socks anymore (this was the time saver part). Stuck gels in back pocket easily. Helmet on easy and unracked bike easily.

Nothing

I crossed the street out of transition and mounted the bike pretty well. There was a woman in front of me who was going NUTS, to put it mildly. Evidently she couldn't clip in and was cussing up a storm and kept yelling "COME ON!!!" She was blocking other people from mounting. Her yelling was very distracting and nerve wracking, but I quickly began telling myself to calm down and not let this maniac make me nervous too. I clipped in before her. :) I think it took me 2 tries to get the 2nd foot in. She was nutty.

Anyway, it started out feeling hard, but my mph was pretty high, so I was pleasantly surprised. All I can say is I just worked as hard and smart as I possibly could. I really focused on using my cycle shoes to help me pull up on the pedals. That is not a natural thing for me at all. When I really thought about it, my speed up hills went up about 2 mph. It was great. I got passed, but mostly by men. A couple of women. One in my AG, towards the end. I also passed a few people. Even ones who were on good bikes and looked fit. I usually pass people not so fit on mountain bikes. So this was a nice thing. ;)

The road did get repaved all of the way up Mt Arab, which was fantastic! It was in terrible condition last year. I made it to the turn off fine and once on this road was where I was able to pass some people. About 1 mile from the turn around you have to cross RR tracks. I hate that. They aren't very smooth and I have to slow down so I don't damage my bike. The turn around point went fantastically better than last year. I unclipped my left foot to put that down for stability since the turn around was pretty tight. I politely declined the drinks/food being offered to me at the aid station and began to look down to clip my left foot back in (I need to practice not looking). This is where I almost ruined the race for 2 other racers.... Without realizing, I veered off into the lane of oncoming cyclists. It took a woman yelling at me to snap me out of my 'clipping-in fog'. oops. I apologized. Soon after I'm sure the woman who passed me at a high rate of speed was the woman I almost crashed into. Good for her. I deserved that.

Rob and the kids were at the bottom of Mt. Arab road cheering me on! It was so much fun seeing them. Tyler always looks so excited and he's always yelling so loudly for me! Rob's taking pictures and cheering me on and Bryn is doing her little cheerleader dance moves cheering me on. They are great! It always puts my mind in a good place.

I took a gel with a couple of miles left. I made sure all of my water was gone from my bottle before getting to the end. I was afraid I was starting to draft off of a woman in front of me towards the end. I was just mindful to try to keep those obligatory 3 bike lengths between us. Dismounting the bike went well. I felt pretty slippery on my bike shoes on the pavement. I could have run a little harder to cross the mat, but didn't want to fall on my ass so I slowed until I hit the grass and had some traction.
Ahhhhh....I was glad it was over, and knew I had beaten last year's time by 9'44". Not too shabby. (Except last year my bike computer said the distance was 20.6 miles. So I guess you could say my bike average went from 16.49 to 18.1.) Very pleased with that. :)

Nothing. This went great. I need to keep getting more time in the saddle, but for this race, there was nothing much I could have done better.
Oh, except not almost crash into those 2 cyclists....

T2 was slower than last year by 40 seconds. One reason is that I had to change shoes and also put socks on. I also had to retrieve them from inside a garbage bag, which was used in case the rain decided to arrive while I was away. I was purposely trying to slow down a bit to get myself under control for the run.

Need yankz for my shoes

I started out slowly. I think. I did feel a little slow, and when I saw the 1 mile marker my watch said 9:25. I don't know what to think of that really. This race in general is so laid back (read: screwy) that I'm not sure the sign was really at the true one mile mark. I've never run a first mile in a race that slowly. Usually if I feel slow, it's still much faster than that - more like 8:15-8:30. I just tried to keep a consistent pace and when my legs felt like they could, I would pick it up a bit. 2 women passed me on the run. They were very well trained runners. It bothered me just a little bit. I knew that would happen, but I looked at them and knew I felt like they did last year - fast(er). I need to decide how hard I want to work on that.

I slowly picked people off, though. I eventually caught up with the woman in my AG who passed me on the bike! She never really tried to give me a run for my money.

I walked one aid station (#3) because I asked them what mile they were at while I got a good drink of water. I didn't have much of a feel for how far I'd gone. I really wanted to know how I was doing. All they knew was they were aid station #3. I tried to take some sips at most of the aid stations, but didn't for the last one or 2 because I didn't want to slow myself down any more. I took in a partial gel with maybe 2 miles left. I didn't want too much, afraid I might get cramps. Had a couple sips of water after it at the last aid station I took water from.

With about 1/4 of a mile left I came up on a girl 29 y.o. As I started to pass her she began to pick up the pace a bit. I told her I wasn't in her AG. I think she didn't want to know that so it was more motivation for her to push it. She trailed off behind me and I finished in front of her. huh. I guess that strategy worked. :)
I was dead, but still finished pretty strong. Glad it was over. So glad I wasn't doing the HIM. I was convinced I would NEVER do a HIM.
But as I watched the finishers of the HIM, I began again to think I might still want to do it. We'll see I guess.

Train more!! Need more speed work and just more time running.

Drank 2 big cups of water and met up with my family.
After I changed clothes, I walked over to McD's across the street and got a coffee, then planted myself by the finish chute to watch the race - you could see the finish as well as the HIM people starting the run at the same spot, with the view of lake right there. Rob ended up going for a run and running the 2nd half of the HIM course while I took the kids to the playground that is at the beginning of the run. We were able to see Mike and Dudley run by and cheered them on. Rob felt funny because he was cheered on and offered stuff at the aid stations.... :)
There was a nice spot to take the kids swimming, right where the race swim started, so I could watch a lot of the race and still let them enjoy themselves
We stayed until Mike and Dudley finished! They did great!!!!
Oh yeah, I went and picked up my hardware for being 2nd in my AG! I missed the actual presentation of it because it didn't occur to me that I would need to worry about that!


Always need to train more.
Get my bike fitted properly.



This race has it's great points, and its not so great points. It's in a wonderful town with great camping, so we really enjoy just going there. The volunteers are fantastic. The townspeople seem to really enjoy having the race, and the volunteers are always very friendly and helpful.

The RD seems very disorganized. It's obviously a low-budget, or at least a low-maintenance race. Don't expect top of the line amenities. They tend to run out of food/drinks, don't always have the right medals or awards, and don't seem to worry too much if the posted distances are really correct. I've already complained about the bike distance for the past 2 years, but I've got some questions about the run now. They moved the run start closer to the lake and around a playground up to the road, and it IS longer than where that was last year, but nothing else was changed on the course to compensate for that. So I think we all ran a longer race, but I didn't have a Garmin on to prove that. There were 15 fewer participants in my race than last year, and 123 fewer participants in the HIM than last year. Don't know if that says anything.
With all of the little aggravations, funny enough, I would probably do it again. :) Rob actually might do it next year. He might be getting the tri bug. :)