Duck Bill Thrill Race Report

Wow Duck Bill Thrill was awesome! The course was much more challenging than I anticipated. Here's the quick rundown:
Total time: 2:36:26.
Swim: 0:33:46,
T1: 0:02:40,
Bike: 1:08:10
T2:0:00:57
Run:0:50:53

I woke up super early Sunday morning at 3:30 am to head down to Eugene.  The drive down was pretty uneventful there was some pretty cool mist on parts of the road but I didn't get a picture.  I arrived at the race course with plenty of time to spare.  Almost too much.  I set up my transition area, was last in line for packet pickup, then last in lie for body marking.  Next race I'll be bringing my own sharpie to mark myself with.  Waiting in the lines meant that I didn't get that much time to warm up in the water.  I would have liked to swim 500 yds or so and that's what coach told me to do but I only got about 200. 

The start of the swim was a huge cluster.  I went out with the side stroke, huge mistake.  I was quickly over swam by people then we stopped almost completely as the people in the front were trying to get things figured out.  Next time I'm going to go out one arm freestyle.  The swim was a 2 loops of 750 meter each.  The first look I did side stroke, the second was one arm free.  I swam pretty straight for the most part and after the first 500 meters or so did not have any issues with running into other people.  I was able to just go out and swim my own race.

The swim to bike transition went well.  I felt pretty good getting on the bike and the first part of the course was a major descent.  At the bottom there was a T as I approached the turn, I went to grab my front break but it didn't slow me much.  I had forgotten to close it after I put my wheel on!!  I totally over cooked the corner and almost wrecked.  Thankfully I was able to keep the rubber side down and the next section was fairly flat so I was able to reach down and close the break. I guess I learned my lesson.  Always check you breaks.  The res of the bike was pretty good.  I passed a ton of people.  The course was much hillier that I thought it was going to be which was nice.  I really like a challenging course. 

Bike to Run transition went really smoothly.  It was pretty fast.  I think getting some Tri specific bike shoes would make it even faster.  They are easier to get on and off.  I was able to find my run legs about 1.5 miles into the run which was also more chalenging that I thought it was going to be.  The first section was down hill the on a rocky gravel trail accross a damn.  The up through some fairl serious "rolling" hills. and then back again.  I tried to run down a few people in the last half mile but was only able to get one of them.

All in all a good strong performance and my first Olympic post ski accident.  I'm happy with the bike but want to swim and run faster.  I guess we'll have to work on those two things.