Decided to take the pressure off myself and just go out there to have fun.

Although this race has been here for several years, I 've never done it - but it is in an area I train in all fo the time.  Racing for me this year has been only last minute local races.  I train regularly, but not on a structure training plan.  My pace was a little slower than what I had fot the Lake Tye race, but this one also had a lot more hills.  I am glad I am finally at a point where I feel like a 400M swim is more of a long sprint and am comfortable pushing the effort level for that distance.  I'm also pretty comfortable trying to push myself on a shorter bike ride these days as well.  I guess the previous 140.6 & 70.3 races provide the context for using different effort levels.  The water was above 70 degrees, so the swim was quite pleasant.  I knew my bike was not going to shift into the lower chain ring and I did not have time to take it to the bike shop, so I was mentally prepared to have to stand to get up the last little hill.  Running is always the hard part for me, but I managed to do 1 min run alternating with :45 sec walk again which was more manageable.

It is probably my last tri for the season since the weather really does not allow more here. I am grateful I got to do a couple lcoal races - one with a team mate & one with my sister.  This helps off-set the 2 did not starts I had for races last year.  It was nice to just accept life was not going to allow for long races this year, and to just go have fun with short local ones at the last minute.