Message posted by: Matthew L.

After the race Olivia and I headed up to Vermont for the week on our family vacation, hence the late RR.

Last year Timberman was my first tri ever so I have been anticipating this race for some time. I have been very interested in judging my progress over the past year.

Swim- 1/3 mile- The water was very rough and I heard that over 40 people had to be plucked out of the water. Swimming was my big problem last year having never swam before and this year I wanted to make major improvements. The rough water did not help but I made it out in a reasonable amount of time. My goal time was 9 but ended up with 11.

T1-Smooth (wetsuit strippers)Not quite totally exhausted from the swim.

Bike- 15 mile- Pretty straight forward on the bike. Did all of my fueling on the bike so as to spend no time anywhere else with it. Finished up at 49min. Not that great as I started to get a real chemically feeling in my gut that made me feel not quite 100% the rest of the race. I felt I should have done 5-10 better on the bike based on my training performances.

T2- Also smooth- Tried getting out of my shoes before dismount. Didn't quite do it super smooth as I still had to stop and dismount. However, running without the shoes on was awesome!!

Run- 3 mile- Run went pretty well wish I could have started a little faster but finished fast at 21min.

I finished in 1:26 and 175th overall. This was just about 20min faster than last year which was 1:45 and 687th. I'm really happy with my finish and am looking forward to more improvement. One of the problems that I have seems to be a spike in heart rate at the beginning of each new part, bike and run. If I can control this and start strong I should be able to improve greatly. Only a couple of more races this season.

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