I should probably have seeded myself higher for the swim since I must have passed 20 or more people in the pool, and swam myself into the next wave. Other than that, the swim went well. Didn't even have to think about form as I swam, which is a nice change of pace.

Seed myself higher. I think telling them 1:50/100M would have put me into the next group up and given me a chance to draft for a faster swim.

I need to figure out some better way of getting into my shoes in T1. I don't know if I'm ready for the flying mount, but I refuse to run in tri shoes and running barefoot up close to the mount line and putting the shoes on kinda sucks.

Good question. Probably something different with my shoes.

Best bike I've ever had, so I'm not going to have any negative comments on it. Picked up almost 2mph over last year, and that was with the rain. On dry pavement I probably would have been comfortable pushing through turns harder.
After reading one of the threads in tri-talk last week, I almost said "Nice swim" to a girl who I caught at mile 5 on the bike. Really, it had to be. I was hauling ass and she was on a hybrid, and not pedaling much at that point. So instead I just went by.

Not much.

Slid out of my shoes a bit to early. Was a bit wobbly putting on my socks.

I would love to get a pair of shoes I could run in sockless (without having to worry about destroying my feet.

A PR. 32 seconds faster than the stand-alone 5k I ran a couple of weeks ago. I got passed by 2 guys from my age group. I may have been able to keep up with them, kinda wish I would have tried. Caught my friend Greg, who started 5 waves ahead of me, at mile 2.5 ish. Out sprinted a guy the last 100 yards.

May have tried to chase down the two guys from my age group. But they were little guys, and I didn't want to blow up my legs.

I drank water, ate a banana, and talked to people.


Weather, possibly?


The race slipped a little bit in my opinion from last year to this year. I heard nearly everyone complaining about the swim, the transition area was nicer last year when it was in a different place and smaller, and I dislike the idea behind using MUP's for the bike. They're fine for the run, but they get really tight on bikes, especially tri-bikes at speed. I understand wanting to make your event bigger and better, but bigger isn't always better.
Overall though, I'd still say it's a great event for beginners, and a great early season tune-up race for more skilled athletes.