The Santa Cruz Sentinel, an Olympic distance race, entertains nearly 1000 participants with its ocean swim and coastal bike and run course.
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I find that I'm less anxious on the short course races because I have less mentally invested. I wish I could feel like this on all of my races because it's very calming. I was standing there waiting to enter the water and I was more interested in whether or not I was going to be cold. Before I knew it, I was off in the water looking for feet but never found them.

The swim was uneventful other than I heard after the fact that a seal decided to come out to see what was going on. It didn't bother anyone but it would've scared the hell out of me so I'm glad I didn't see it.

T1 was a little slow and I'm not exactly sure why. Oh well, I guess I better practice some more. The bike, thankfully uneventful considering there are winds present at times that can blow you off the road... especially when you have deep wheels. Fortunately today was not one of those days and I was back in transition making up for a crappy T1 with a T2 time of 50 seconds.

The main reason I was looking forward to this event was to see how hard I could push the run... and I did. I started off fast and hit the halfway point where I took it up a notch. On the way back I passed a guy who decided to keep up with me. I couldn't hear him but I knew he was back there because everytime we passed one of his teammates they cheered him on.

With less than a mile to go, I started to push it as hard as I could but couldn't drop him. Upon entering the chute, his teammates on the sidelines were telling him to catch me. At that point I started sprinting while glancing over my shoulder... he wasn't there. I crossed the finish line and he was soon there with me. Having that dual to the end with him was the best part of the race and I think we both finished faster because of it. We congratulated each other and went on our way. In fairness to him, I beat him on the run but he was in the following age group so he beat me overall.

Numbers:

Total Time: 2:20:56, 76th Overall, 14th in my Age Group
Swim: 0:26:53
T1: 0:03:11
Bike: 1:08:59 (21.62)
T2: 0:00:50
Run: 0:41:01 (6:36)