When the gun went off I took off at a good pace. I saw some other good swimmers to my right so I gradually moved over to them. 1st place just took off from right around the first buoy and ended up about a minute and a half ahead, so I had no chance to stay with him. I did settle into a nice rhythm with Rick though. We were swimming side by side to the turn buoy where I had a half a body length lead on him. Once we turned back towards the finish he was on my feet for about a 100 yards. Then he passed me and I jumped on his feet. My shoulders started to get a little tired and he started to pull away from me. I finished about 6 or 7 seconds behind him I think. Came out of the water in 3rd place overall though so I was happy. I think the course was a bit long because 1st place should be around 17-18 minutes usually and he was at 20+.

Long run to the bike racks. I had my top off and wetsuit down to my waist by the time I got there. Took a bit too much time getting my helmet on. Stuffed my suit into the bag and then ran my bike to the mount line. Jumping onto the bike I couldn't get the shoes to stay up so it wasn't that fast of a mount for me.

I used the first few miles of downhills to really try and get my legs under me. I got passed by about 6 people in the first few miles and dropped back to 9th overall. After mile 5 I started pushing hard. I was holding a steady 25-26MPH for the next 10 miles or so. Unfortunately this is because there was a nice tailwind. Once we turned to go up the little hill, I really tried to attack the hill and I think I used up too much energy here. After the u-turn, I dropped my chain trying to get into my big ring. Tried to catch it back on, but no luck. Jumped off and manually put it back on. Probably cost me 20 seconds here. My legs were very tired from pushing up that hill and I didn't recover from it until we turned around and started heading back towards town. Unfortunately there was a head wind and I was struggling to push 19-20mph now. My legs were exhausted and the head wind was killing me so I could see my average speed dropping fast. I pushed as hard as I could the last few miles, but I just had nothing in my legs. Hit the aquabike finish line and pulled my bike out of the way.

Ended up 4th fastest swim and 47th fastest bike split for the olympic distance racers. Better swim than last year, but worse bike than last year. I was in 12th place overall after the bike.


This is a great race. Rudy Project donated some prizes for the winners so I won a brand new pair of sun glasses, which was awesome. They also gave out sweet cowbells to the overall winners and I got one of those as well. This is an excellent race.