"If you are talking that much, then you aren't going hard enough"

This report will attempt to be pretty short. Well, we'll see how that goes.

Prerace

Not much different here. I didn't do any carb loading except the day before the race. All that I did was eat a decent amount of food the day before and had a pretty big dinner. That morning, I ate a big breakfast and that was all the solid food that I had that morning. After I left, I had a bottle of water and then a bottle of Gatorade about 30 minutes before the start of the race. I had at least 3, maybe 4, RPs and that was it. I wish the had more porta potties because there wasn't enough.

The Swim - 29:24

The swim was barely wetsuit legal. I still wore it because I get a benefit from it, but I don't know how much of a benefit it was during the race. Also, the waves were sane and I was the wave after the open wave. The swim wasn't a good one for me. It's either because the swim course was long or it was accurate and I'm used to short swim courses. The swim was horrible because I couldn't breathe the entire time. I don't think it was the wetsuit, either. I think my exercise induced asthma was acting up. I breathed on every single stroke and when I did, I felt like I was breathing through a straw. I almost puked, too. I swallowed a huge mouthful of the water in Town Lake and that didn't sit well with my stomach. I came out of the swim and my time was horrible, but I was done with it. It was good for 7th in my AG and a pace of 1:58/100m.

T1 - 3:00

I consider that's a pretty good time considering I felt like I was almost going to pass out. I got my wetsuit off and then grabbed my bike. I started running out of T2 and bad things started to happen. My vision started to, I couldn't breathe, and I started to get light headed. I have orthostatic hypotension but this was different. It felt almost like asthma attack. I was going to sit down so that I didn't pass out and keel over, but it passed. I kept going out of T1 and I was on the bike course. Oh, I was 15th in my AG. Not bad considering I had a wetsuit on and not many people were wearing them.

The Bike - 1:06:35

I really like this bike course. I think it's much faster and safer than the CapTexTri course. There are only two U-turns per loop and there are only 3 loops. There are some challenging sections, especially the part going up southbound Congress south of Lady Bird Lake. The first loop I took pretty easy, I pushed it really hard on the 2nd loop, and took it somewhat hard on the 3rd loop. My back was hurting as well. I gotta figure out how to prevent that. I saw a lot of people riding on the left and they should've been on the right. I also witnessed a near crash because of this. Some slow guy was riding to the left and some faster guy tried passing him on the left. The guy on the right went all squirrely and was definitely not a good bike handler. The touched bikes and the squirrely guy nearly went down. I was 5th in my AG and averaged 22.4mph.

T2 - 1:23

Nothing special. I think I had a pretty quick T2 and don't have much to note except that putting on socks really wastes a lot of time. 8th in my AG.

The Run - 46:14

The run felt great. I took it a bit easy on the bike and it paid in the run. I felt fine pretty much the entire time and coming off the bike was fine as well. No cramps, side stitches, or anything like that. Actually, I could've gone harder. I saw Amy on the run and I chatted with her a bit on the 2nd loop. She told me "If you are talking that much, then you aren't going hard enough". That was pretty much the truth. Like I said, I felt good. Actually, too good. I really should've pushed harder and gone faster. I finish strong. Oh, one more thing. I had a Gu on the run and I shouldn't have done that. I didn't feel like I needed it and it upset my stomach a bit. I was 15th in my AG with a pace of 7:27/mile. That is my fastest 10K distance pace that I've ever done in a race so I'm happy with that.

My total time was 2:26:36 and I got 4th in my AG out of 52 people. Overall, I was 59th out of about 700 people. I was almost on the podium. Oh, here is another interesting fact. My swim, bike, and run time was 2:22:13. The guy behind me was 2:22:06, but he finished 5th. I totally kicked his ass in the transitions and got 4th instead of 5th because of that. I'm pretty happy with my race. I need to not skip swimming the week and a half before the race and I need to practice in a wetsuit if I haven't worn it in 4 months.

This was the inaugural Austin Tri. I really like this race. It was well organized and I like this race much better than CapTex. It was less crowded. Well, that's it. I had a good race at a good race.