I was very pleased with this swim. Far and away my fastest swim time in a race. I honestly suspect the numbers might be off a bit, but this is the official result, so I'm going with it! Water temp was absolutely perfect for racing.

Nothing. It was a very good swim for me.

I'm not a very good transitioner, so this is one area I could certainly work on. I need to get that wetsuit off faster!

Work on a more fluid motion getting the wetsuit off. Practice, practice, practice getting those bike shoes on.

This is a good pace for me, but still not a great ranking, unfortunately. Oh well. I passed a lot of people going up hills, but then they would often catch me on the flats. About halfway through the course, I started feeling the dreaded side stitch. I slowed a bit and concentrated on my breathing, but couldn't get it to go away.

Push harder on the flats. There were a couple of times that I intentionally was holding back a bit in prep. for the run. Also drink more to stave off the cramps. (Although I get them if I drink too much too, what is a girl to do??)

Again, transitions are not my strong point. I just needs to practice getting the bike shoes off and the run shoes on.

Remember my race number belt! Doh! I was half way through the run when I realized that I totally forgot to put it on in T2! I was worried that I might be DQ'd because of it, but they kindly just used my body marking instead.

Ugh. This run was tough. Even though the race director had told us the night before that the run course was flat, her definition of flat and mine are clearly very different! :) Yes, relative to the bike course it was flat, but uh... Anyway, the bottom line is that it was getting bloody hot out and I had the double-sided side stitch going, so very early on my goal changed from "sub-10:00 miles" to "finish without walking." :(

Drink more. Maybe do a summersault for the side stitch. Ha ha. It was not a terrible run (still faster than any run split I had last year), but it was not good either.

Sucked down some water and stretched quite a bit. Had some watermelon and watched more racers come in.

I drank two bottles of water and 1.5 bottles of Gatorade without having to use the port-a-john, so I suspect I was more than a little dehydrated. :)


The heat and humidity on the run. My continued lack of speed on the bike.


This is an awesome race that runs like a well-oiled machine. The course is beautiful, and there are tons of volunteers. NICE long sleeved coolmax race shirt without the advertisements all over it, and was actually available in women's sizes--woohoo!

We'll definitely do this race again in the future. It's not far from the cabin and it was really nice to make a weekend out of it.

Side note #1: This was the qualifying race for the Best of the US series for North and South Dakota (apparently there must be a lack of races in ND/SD??), so there were a lot of top racers there.

Side note #2: The morning after the race I went for a slow easy ride to loosen up the legs. When I got back I noticed that my back tire was about to blow (threads showing through the rubber) and sure enough about an hour later it did! Talk about lucky timing.