Holy crap, this sucked big time! Because of the water temp and air temp at the start, I decided to wear my wet suit. I hadn't used it in 1.5 years, but didn't think there'd be an issue. Wrong. I could not breathe and almost abandoned the race after rounding the first bouy and then a few more times during the swim. Also, the water was pretty rough and tons of people were rescued. As i waited for my wave to start I saw person after person in every wave get picked up by the seadoos. Every paddle board seemed to have others hanging on and a few people just turned around and swam back to shore. I'm sure this - the seas- contributed to my breathing issues. Plus I swallowed a ton of sea water! Because of my breathing issues, I ended up breast stroking most of the way. Once when I was doing freestyle the life guard stopped me because I was heading out to sea. I had a nice little conversation with him about how that probably wasn't a good idea and how busy a morning he had with all the rescues. Obviously, I was in no rush to start swimming again. Also, when I was trying to use the freestyle my stroke was so bad - I was catching no water and just spinning my arms. I think part of that was the waves as they were times there was no water to catch! I have absolutely no fear of the water, but I was getting so tired that I did get a bit worried once or twice. Finally made the turn back to shore and thought I would just ride the waves in (which is a blast), unfortunately, there was a pretty good undertow so I'd catch a wave and surge forward only to have the undertow bring me back a bit. That was very frustrating, so as soon as I could stand up I did, even though it meant walking before I normally would have. I was so sxhausted when I got out that I did not run up the beach as I normally would. Also, I had trouble reaching the cord to pull down the zipper to the wet suit, luckily the nice person behind me offered her services.
As bad as this was I was happy to see I was not the last one out of the water, but knew I had a lot of work to do to make up for this horrible swim

not wear the wetsuit!

it was a long way from the swim exit to the transition area and then my rack was at the opposite end, so this was faster than i thought it was going to be :)

not be so beaten up from the swim so I could actually run.

I had not done a lot of biking since November. In fact, I only took the bike on the road once in the last 4 months, although I did do trainer rides. I was very happy on the bike, other than the sore neck muscles. My goal was to pass lots of people, so that when i was heading back there would still be some people heading out. Since I was in the last wave and had such a bad swim I thought I'd be in real danger of being the last person, however, I was able to do a lot of passing and gave myself a comfortable enough cushion that I knew I would not have my own escort back to transition :)
There was a pretty strong mostly east wind that I really felt on the last 4 miles and felt my pace drop pretty far.

nothing really, for my bike fitness this was pretty good. In fact, my run results prove that I outbiked my bike fitness.

long way through transition and then I didn't move as quickly as I would have liked once I got back to my rack.

I could not get my heart rate down the entire run. I pushed to much on the bike to have a good run. In fact, I allowed myself to walk every mile (2x in the last mile) in an effort to control it. Since I had such a late start, by the time I hit the run it was HOT and since the path has trees lining it on the ocean side, we did not get the benefit of the wind. Still, it was no where near as hot as last year and this year my hamstring was not torn, so despite the elevated HR, this run was much better than last year's. My legs felt great and I wasn't really tired overall; I just couldn't control my HR. So, this was a slow run for me.

Have better bike fitness.

As I ran toward the finish line, the announcer called me over to him to hand me one of the "awards" they handed out. This allowed me to go to about 8 venders for a gift. So, My warm down was drinking water while walking around (in the sand) picking up crappy little gifts from the vendors.

We then headed back to the car where it took us almost an hour to get out of the parking garage!. While we waited, Peter jumped out and found a cuban restaurant and brought back drinks and pastries!


almost drowning. Also, Saturday night my tonsils started to swell and as I write this they are still swollen and I have a bit of a fever. This may account for some of my issues. Or maybe not.


Like last year, I did this race with 2 of my brothers - Mark and Peter. They each had interesting things happen to them. Mark's bike's brakes went on him and he went from having no brakes at one point to them rubbing the wheel for the last few miles!
Peter is a crack up. He is such a naturally gifted athlete he can get away with a lot of things like not having been on a bike since August and only being in the water once since August. Plus, the bike he used is my road bike which is way too small for him so he gets off it with a sore hip and shoulder which makes running a real blast. Also, he couldn't find his goggles, so he had to use old ones that you could not see through, so every so often while swimming he had to stop, move the goggles to see where he was, replace them and swim on. Towards the end he got a leak with this little move, so he ended up swimming with one eye closed. Even with being completely unprepared for the race and using bad (and injurious equipment)he posts a good time and beats both Mark and me.

This was a hard race for me, but it was satisfying in its own way. Plus it is always nice to do things like this with my brothers.