Woke up at 5:10, a little earlier than I’d planned since my dad-in-law decided he was doing the race at the last minute, so I picked him up on the way. This actually sort of caused a cascade of issues since I didn’t have time to eat breakfast. The steel cut oats, banana, and maple syrup REALLY didn’t appeal to me unfortunately, and because I felt so rushed, I maybe got one or two bites in before I had to head out. I think this was a big mistake.

Transition setup went well, didn’t forget anything, plan was great.

Swim was fantastic (at least from what I know from the watch). My pace was 1:40/100m which was much better than the previous race. We’ll have to wait on the official results but I was really happy with this. For some reason I got it in my head that I needed to push myself in the swim but in the end I’m a little regretful about this. You'll see why.

T1 was BAD. I was totally out of breath when I got out of the water and essentially needed to stand still and put hands on knees to regroup myself. I probably lost a minute or two just getting back to the right mental & physical place. Now whether this had something to do with me not really having any breakfast…I guess there’s no way to know, but wouldn’t be surprised.

Bike started off OK I think. The whole time I kept wanting to push harder, but just didn’t have the energy in me. Again, think the lack of a “real” breakfast got me here. I also didn’t drink any water at all for the full 42 minutes. I need a better strategy there too, I just plain forgot and the aero bottle I’m using has a really rigid straw that makes it really tough to drink and ride at the same time without some facial acrobatics. I did have the clif blok earlier than planned because I felt REALLY hungry. Man, lack of breakfast really did not do good things for me. My average power was 152W and normalized was 156W. For comparison, Life Time average was 153W and normalized was 158W. So it is what it is. I do think the reason I didn’t perform as well as I thought I could was 1) pushing too hard in the swim and 2) no breakfast 3) having to pee like crazy from about 15 minutes on. The last issue really affected me more than I would have liked, it was just really hard to push myself.

T2 was much much better than T1. I felt good getting off the bike, got the helmet off, popped a honey stinger, had some water, put on the visor, and went on my way.

Like the swim, the run was my best run of the season so far. According to the watch, my average pace was 9:53 / mile which is ~40s / mile faster than Life Time in late May! I’m really happy with this and didn’t walk for a second! The last km was a sprint for me, I saw another guy with a 33 on his leg and made up my mind to beat him. So I picked up the pace to a 8 minute pace for the last 0.6 km, I kept it up and beat him!

All in all, I’m really happy with the race. At the results tent, my placing was 10/14 when I checked, I’m sure it could change as more people finished but the way I look at it, my swim and run were both MUCH better, and the bike was the same as last race. I would have liked to have hit my bike goals but I think this was more a matter of race day planning and nutrition than fitness. Always something. Onwards to Kerrville where maybe I can learn from today and rock the bike.