Okay, so I was one of a handful of people NOT wearing a wetsuit. Coach Mike said go no-wetsuit so I could practice for the Horsetooth 10k which is no wetsuit and freakin' cold. When I got out of the water I was pissed about my time. But once I saw that I was still top third in my AG without a wetsuit...damn. Okay, fine. There was another girl at like 14:30 and one at 15:00 and all the rest were 17+. Not sure how the boys swam so fast, but the girls had issues.

I was upset at the start because I felt like a ton of people pulled away from me. But I was supposed to be concentrating on long and strong pulls and breathing and NOT getting into my usual wiggy-race mode of thrashing. So I tried to stop worrying about racing and just worry about swimming. The only time I did a bad thing was when right before the last turn some girl kept hitting my feet. I got pissed because as far as I was concerned, I don't really like giving people a free ride. So I sprinted for 10 seconds to lose her. I felt like it slowed me down for the next 30 seconds, but she never caught up again. Bad Jen.

The water was cold, but bearable. The first couple of minutes of the warmup I was thinking "No way in hell I will be able to do a 10k swim in water this cold without a wetsuit" but once the first few minutes were over I was FINE. Wetsuit-schmetsuit.

I REALLY need to learn to draft. REALLY.

Holy shit. I had the FASTEST T1 in my age group!!!! Could it be because I didn't wear a wetsuit? :) Got into and out of T1 just fine. Once across the mount line (and hence already across the timing mat) I completely jacked up getting on my bike with the shoes attached. This needs work before my A-race tri.

Not screw up getting on my bike. I almost fell over.

Only took me 0.25 miles to get into my shoes...after I almost fell off my bike in the first 10 feet. Ugh. Then getting my second foot in I swerved badly. I need practice.

Just about right out of the shoot there's a BIG hill. Took me forever to climb up. Even though it was a sprint, I didn't want to blast myself going up this hill so I stayed seated. Mike passed me right at the top. Bummer...he already made up 5 minutes on me and I wasn't even 2 miles into the bike!

After the hill it flattened out. Up and down slight inclines. I tried to push hard, but I'm not much of a pusher on the bike. Got down about a half bottle of heed. It's a sprint...it's not like I need a lot of nutrition.

Roads were not swept so I had to slow down a lot at all the turns.

Got to come back down the big hill on the way back in. Got up to 39.1 mph and at the base of the hill there was an intersection with a cop directing traffic and letting people go. I watched her wave an SUV through and I'm going so fast that I didn't think the SUV was going to make it through the intersection before I got there. The SUV agreed with me and refused to go...whew. Cop was oblivious to me and kept waving her through but thankfully the SUV refused to budge. Still made me hit my brakes a little bit so I lost a few mph. Oh well.

Once on the road to T2 I got my feet out of my shoes easily and pulled right up to the dismount line.

Push harder? HR on the bike was way too low for a sprint. I even got passed by a dude on a mountain bike!

13th in my AG...so not nearly as good as T1. Putting socks on takes forever.

Hurry up, dammit.

Holy heck. Whoever designed this course deserves to be SHOT! Run out of transition and up this HUGE hill. I was supposed to run easy the first mile so I jogged easy up it. Plummeted down the other side thinking, "Gee, no mile markers on the course". Just as I thought this I started back UP the hill for the second time. About 100 feet up was the "Mile 1" marker. Shit. You mean I've only gone a mile? Oh, this is going to be a LONG LONG run.

This time we went up a steeper portion. I saw a lot of folks walking and I decided that was going to be a damn good plan. So I power walked the second half of the hill. Plummeted down and could see that thankfully we did not have to go up again. Whew. The course went out the other way and looked pretty flat so I tried to pick it up (I was supposed to run the last two miles hard). Kept glancing at HR and saw LT +/- 3 beats so I guess that's about as hard as I can go!

Never saw a "Mile 3" marker so I suspect the final split I have was 1.1 miles...I was hauling, so I think I ran it faster than the second mile (does that make sense?).

Splits: Time/AHR/MHR
Mile 1: 9:43/171/177
Mile 2: 8:27/177/182
Mile 3.1?: 8:31/182/190

Nothing. Good run. Finally figured out how to push myself hard on the run again.

Got a cup of water, walked over to Mike, then walked to the finish shoot to watch Don (ButchUSAF) finish. Then dismantled transition and left.


No wetsuit, hills, not terribly fast on short stuff.


Bigger race than I thought. I guess the number of people had doubled since last year. I originally thought I went pretty slow, but after reviewing the results, it wasn't so bad. We didn't stay for the post-race activities because we had places to go. I gave it an overall "too hard" for me because of the hills. Those kicked my butt.