Man, what a wild race...

There was significant snow in the Rockies the night before (9/4) and it was about 47 degrees at the start. Nothing like having the water feel warmer than the air... by a good twenty degrees...

ANYhow, we stood around in the cold in our swimsuits (wetsuit? Me? Nah...) and bare feet on the freezing sand for twenty minutes before my wave finally got off, and it took me a good ten minutes into the swim to get the ol' muscles warm enough to actually do the job. When I got out of the water (which I did NOT want to do) and onto the bike, I left a jacket on because I was still freezing.

The bike ride was 17 miles - the first 5.5 of which were uphill. This would have been all right, as it was a slow, gradual sort of uphill, except we were also rolling into about a 30 MPH headwind. I heard people cursing under their breath and going "oof!" and generally complaining. I figured oh well, I'll gut my way to the top and then we'll have a killer tailwind coming back down, right?

WRONG! The wind died down as we headed back down the hill. Bogus, man. So I am philosophically sucking my Gatorade and thinking "Okay, so at least it won't be windy for the run..."

WRONG AGAIN! The run was a beautiful flat course that took us out along a dam by the reservoir, and should have been great, except the stupid wind came up again so strongly that you got beaten severely about the face with your race number. You could hear people coming up behind you because THEIR race numbers were beating THEM about the face, too. Needless to say, I settled into the niche I've been in all summer long and finished comfortably - third from last AGAIN (in my division.) Oh well, someone has to be back there to make the rest of the participants feel good about themselves, huh?

Still, I did good - all I wanted was to beat my time for the one I did earlier in the summer with a similar distance, and I did that by about a minute and a half at 2:35:43. So I can't complain too loudly. Last race of the season, on to next year!