This race went really well, in retrospect, although there were a few points in the race where I lost time and could have finished even better than I did. The race started with a swim in the not-so-smooth waters of Lake Erie, in Ashtabula Harbor. It was an out-and-back quarter-mile swim, and didn't really go so well for me. Swimming is something I will need to spend lots more time on in the off-season. T1 was fairly fast, as I opted to go sockless for this race. I started out hard on the bike and didn't let up, passing lots of people. I was somewhere around 15th out of the water, but by the end of the bike, I had passed all but two of the other racers.

My second transition is where I lost second place. My orthotics decided to move around as I was putting my foot into my shoe, and it took me three attempts to finally get my shoe on. Once I did, I lit up the running course, making up ground and eventually posting the fastest run split of the day. I was only about 20 seconds behind the second-place finisher at the end, which is about how long it took me to get that stupid shoe on.