I made my goal of less than 15 minutes, and I was faster than about 1/3 of the people--not bad for not being able to complete 50 m when I started in April.
I need to navigate better, stay calm, and USE DEFOG!

Use defog--I never needed it in the pool, but lack of it cost me at least 15-20 seconds on the swim

No shirt next time--this cost me almost a minute.

Blew a tire immediately exiting T1--this cost me 7:57! Adjusting for this mishap, I finished 32 in my age group and around 220 overall.

Once I hit the road, I only got passed by people with better bikes than mine (mostly Olympic distance with aero bars) I also nearly averaged 18 mph with this adjustment, which was my goal.

I recovered, and I was happy with being able to shake that off and continue

Don't inflate to full amount the night before--tires were hot and got too high of pressure. This really cost me.

And if I ever do change tire again, make sure to put it back on correctly--tire was on backwards so I had no computer (magnet was on wrong fork).

THe people on adjacent sides crowded the rack, so I had to adjust two bikes before I could rack mine. Even with this, I still transitioned in less than my goal of 2:00

Total transition (T1 + T2) was within my goal of <5:00

I wasn't properly hydrated for the conditions (in hindsight). I also realize that I need to train at hotter temperatures and on hills, rather than my morning flat course. I completely failed on my goal of 10 minute miles. I know I can do better.

Train differently.

Stretch, get some carbo, hug the kids and go for a soak in the lake


Flat tire, heat on the run, adjustment to my first open water swim.


Great race organizers. Great spectators. I am hooked on the high I got from this event. This is the start of something fun.

The best thing was the grueling uphill for the last 1/8-1/4 mile. Somebody was 50 m ahead of me, and some others were 50 m behind. As I started pumping to climb to the finish (I was NOT going to walk to the finish), a woman yelled out "Keep it up, we're all cheering for YOU!" at which point the whole crowd of spectators started cheering. I've never hundreds of people cheer for ME. Totally cool.

I got my "Finished" medal, to which my 4 year old started proclaiming "Dad won the race!".