Lakeside Sprint Triathlon

The final triathlon in the MSC series, and my first time trial, as I actually did this one last year on my heavy-ass commuter bike. That was also back when I could run, so the times for this year's race would prove to look like someone else had impersonated me by comparison.

It was a super-carpool edition to this race, as I got KB to grab one of the few final spots in this race in the hopes that she could finally do a proper triathlon on her third attempt - so we stuffed ourselves and our bikes into ML's car and took the endless ride to Lakeside, a needle-in-a-haystack somewhere out between Woodstock and London.

Eine kleine rant:
We did arrive a bit late for comfort, and since the race was over-sold and they had rearranged the TA to fit as many bikes as possible, it was quite tight. ML was in his primo fast gentlemen's area near the exit, and KB was pretty close too in the overflow late registrants' area. As usual, the rest of the ladies were stuck in the back. But behold! I see a perfect 4' piece of space at the near end of my AG rack, so I go for it. Well that didn't sit too well with a fast-looking girl to my opposite right. Her towel was taking up most of that space, and she complained that now it would be hard for her to get to her stuff with my front wheel "in the way." Firstly, the amount of space available was exactly per MSC photo instructions. Secondly, this TA was extra-tight, and every piece of space needed to be used. Thirdly, our rack still managed to look exactly the same as at every other tri I'd done this season. All I could think was, "take a look around, princess!" After a polite argument, she let me stay. Geez. I was fairly sure this was the girl whom I expected to win this race, which made this confrontation doubly ridiculous. I had meant to readjust my brakes, which were rubbing as we walked from the car, but she totally made me forget, gah.

I used my wetsuit this time, which probably did as much harm as good - but it was chilly in that little lake. The swim went by as normal for me - slowly. But pretty good sighting. Still a pathetic 10th place out of the water. Taking off the wetsuit wasn't a total tragedy. But my break pads were definitely squealing on the way out of T1, so I had to stop and fiddle with them. Crap.

The nice thing about starting way back out of the swim is you get to pass everybody. It's extremely satisfying. But the not-so-nice thing about it is that you have to pass everybody. I ended up wishing for a pre-recorded sound effect of "on your left," as I got tired of yelling it out. I'm sure the constant passing was eating into my time. Nevertheless, we were flying out to the turnaround with a crazy tailwind. Of course I didn't realize that until we actually did turn around. I just thought I was having a great race! Then BAM. On the way back, it was like we were tethered. It felt worse than climbing a steep hill. I finally got passed by a couple of guys, although they went past me with the familiar whoosh-whoosh of their disc wheels, so can't feel too bad about that! Turned out I had passed 6 women in my AG somewhere in that mass of riders.

I had no idea where I was in my placing heading out for the run, and I knew that provided Princess would win the race, I'd need at least a 6th place finish to overtake her on points and get my 3rd place in the series. One girl my age tried to overtake me right out of T2. Nuh-uh. I put on some speed and left her behind. I started seeing some female racers returning somewhere at 1.5km / 3.5km, Princess included, but it was hard to tell who else was in my AG. I finally caught one girl about 3km in, and we jostled back and forth for a few hundred metres, neither able to drop the other. When we caught up to a few slower people running abreast, I took the outside to pass, and she was left stuck behind them. She couldn't catch me after that. I sprinted in and shook RD John Salt's hand one last time with abundant thank-yous for a wonderful series.

Toronto Triathlon Club on the podium!

This was to be a truly awesome end to a year for both me and my season-long race buddy ML. He finally battled past the super-talented guys in his AG and grabbed a 3rd place podium spot - so well deserved, as that is a seriously competitive group! And then it was my turn - also 3rd! Thank goodness I was able to hold off that one girl and then pass the other one.

To speed up the awards ahead of the kids' races, they would cram both the men and women in each group onto the same podium, so ML and I have an award photo together, yay! Also felt so good to get up there in our club gear, so proud.

On top of that, I got catapulted up to 2nd place in the series, and ML safely locked up 3rd, so we'll be getting even more awards later in the fall. So awesome.

As we were clearing out of the TA, I showed ML the space I had picked for a second opinion - and his second opinion was that this was the perfect place to put another bike. So there.

Swim - 16:41 / 2:14
T1 - 1:57
Bike - 42:05 / 28.5
T2 - 1:01
Run - 24:46 / 4:58

	S	T1	B	T2	R	F
Place in Discipline	10	7	3	13	4	3
Place in Real Time	10	11	4	4	3	3

A comparison to last year's times on the exact same course reveals that... hold on, let me get the data...

Bala Falls Triathlon

	S	T1	B	T2	R	F
Place in Discipline	16	8	10	11	8	10
Place in Real Time	16	15	11	11	10	10

Bracebridge Olympic Triathlon

Olympic-distance triathlon - take two!

Back to lovely Muskoka for me, this time solo. The weather forecast was looking grim for the race scheduled for Sunday. Earlier on Saturday, the sprint race had been nearly entirely washed out, and after numerous course changes, finally ended up being a splash-n-dash. As I drove up towards Barrie, the rain intensified and an ominous pitch black cloud moved in. Just past Barrie in Oro country, the rain was so heavy and the water on the road so thick, I thought my car would get swept into the ditch. I had to pull over and call my campsite to let them know I'd be a late arrival.

Yes, I was going to camp in this weather! When we did Gravenhurst, ML and I had camped at Camp Hillbilly, a cute little family grounds just south of town that allowed us to get up at a reasonable 5:45am rather than ... not sleep at all! When the monsoon relented a bit, I continued on, and thankfully the rain was a drizzle at the camp. I was so proud of myself for very quickly erecting my nearly-never used tent super-fast, using the car lights for illumination. I made it with the whole construction just in time for the heavy rain to resume.

Somehow the rain stopped overnight - phew! It left behind a damp set of roads in the Bracebridge area, but the full race could go on. Now, I am notoriously bad with getting my tires inflated before races. The first time I had attempted to inflate them, I deflated them instead. I've let others do it for me ever since. Except that I'm incredibly shy about asking! The race was about to start, I was already in my wetsuit, when I see a guy panicking because he needs to change a tire. One of the officials actually started to help him. I waited for them to be done, and I pounced, knowing there would be a pump available. The announcer was asking people to leave the TA at this point, so the official actually inflated the tires for me! Thank goodness, I had 20psi in them, holy mama. What a nice guy, that official.

The Bracebridge swim takes place in the Muskoka River, which is so narrow that it's a time trial start, every 5 seconds. At my speed, I can't seriously take advantage of keeping track of passing people (more like people passing me), but I did enjoy the easy sighting - if you keep next to the shore, you basically can't fail.

This race was the second time, by the way, where I somehow managed to lock out El Satellite Dish by pressing some random buttons. I continued mashing various button combinations whilst in the quick-moving line towards my start interval, and finally found the right combo (Mode + Up) while the girl in front of me was already starting, yeesh! It's a terrible set of lock-out buttons, as I naturally hold the watch by them while pushing other buttons - that is bad design!

T1 was especially fun for me, because not only did I have to get rid of a wetsuit, I had to unpack and fasten a band-aid to the crease of my instep, after my improbable crash in upstate New York the week before left me with an open wound that refused to heal. I would have to do this again in T2.

What followed was the most white-knuckled ride I'd hitherto taken in my short cycling career. Damp roads. Steep hills. Shitty pavement. Fast cars. Fast riders. Lack of riding fitness. Jitters from my little crash. It's all a horrible blur, except for a couple of particularly evocative moments. The one long sick climb towards the lollipop turnaround, where I just gritted my teeth and slowly and endlessly climbed. Then on the lollipop, we turned off onto the worst road in northern Ontario, where I had to slow right down to avoid getting thrown, so I then consequently made a very slow right straight into a super-steep uphill. I could already see one girl walking her bike towards the top, and I thought, "That's not gonna be me!!!" I have no pride. I didn't downshift, I just dropped straight into the small ring, stood up, and fought my way to the top. As I passed the girl, she told me she'd actually tipped her bike. Of course, as soon as we were both on flat ground, she got back on and left me in her dust.

Maybe the last part of the ride on Santa's Village Road wasn't too bad, but I also just think I was glad to be ever-closer to the finish. I changed my foot-dressing again and took off on the run along the other side of the river. What's great about smashing up your heel in a bike crash? You really, really focus on mid-foot striking. The run course is basically all-flat, except for one little hiccup. I finally started to feel great here. My club-mate CL passed me and cheered me on. I could see our other friend MQ ahead as well, so all the TTC tri suits really boosted my mood. Once my untrained legs started to loosen up, I got faster and faster. I still got passed by someone in my AG, but I felt amazing. I finished off with an awesome sprint. I negative-split the 10k by nearly a minute.

So there was my first Olympic triathlon. Kind of a comedy of errors, but I'm happy I pushed through it and even enjoyed it at the end.

Swim: 33:40
T1: 3:29
Bike: 1:32:15
T2: 2:07
Run: 55:15

	S	T1	B	T2	R	F
Place in Discipline	7	9	7	8	7	7
Place in Real Time	7	7	6	6	7	7

--Distance: 51.5km
--Duration: 3:06:45

Gravenhurst Olympic Triathlon

First ever attempt at an Olympic distance triathlon. And first ever DNF! How exciting!

Photo c/o segwun.com

The defining feature of the Gravenhurst races is the swim start from the Muskoka Steamships, a pair of tourist boats that cruise the Muskoka lakes. You jump off the boat 1,500m off-shore and try to swim back. It's kind of a neat idea, although it does not allow for any swim warm-up, as waves of racers get forced off the boat in quick succession. And because ladies always start last, we really felt quite rushed - like they were making us walk the plank at sword-point. I was in the water for about 20secs and barely paddled to the start buoys before the whistle went off.

Garmin Tracks

The swim was long and tedious for me. I felt really sluggish, and I had a hard time seeing the buoys. Seems I put on a helluva extra distance. The wetsuit really didn't help. The run to transition was quite long, through the marina buildings and across the main road. I was re-energized to get on the bike, though, for my first 40km race, and on a challenging course too. It was after 9am at that point, but the day was already stifling hot and muggy.

I started running my bike out of the TA, but I heard this awful squeal. A volunteer asked me to check my breaks, but they were totally fine and well-adjusted. I kept going, passed the exit gate and did a perfect flying mount onto my clipped-in shoes. Unfortunately a couple of revolutions in, the squealing from my rear tire became unbearable. I got off, pulled the bike to the side and started to investigate. Turned out that my rear wheel had sunk deep into the profiled seat tube, and there was no space between them. I took the wheel off, put it back on, repeated a bunch of times, but it was no use. The mount line crossed the swim run-in, and the RD was standing there cheering people on, so I approached him. I was hoping he could authorize some official assistance, but all he said was, "Oh, it's your set screws. Looks like your bike is done." I didn't even know what that meant until later, or how easily I could have fixed it right then and there. I asked him if I could still do the run unofficially, and he told me to hand in my timing chip and wait till the run course was opened before heading out on the run.

My sense of humour - tracks for milling about the TA

Handing in my chip to the Triathlon Ontario official was a real bummer. I re-racked my bike in the lonely TA, put on my run gear, grabbed my food and drinks, and went off to find some shade. What followed had to be the most boring 60-90mins of my life. There was quite literally nothing going on at the race HQ. It was now oppressively hot, and all the friends and family, volunteers, merchants, and relay team members were huddling under any piece of shade they could find, unable to move. Once in a while, the race announcer would make a lame attempt at a break with monotony, but really she was speaking to no one. Now I understood how my race buddy ML's girlfriend felt when waiting for him at the Wasaga Oly last year. A courageous woman.

Aaaaand my speed during what should have been the bike ride.

I had calculated that I could safely get out on the run course at about 2:00 into the race so that I wouldn't interfere with the dynamic of my AG. I also rightly guessed the approximate times when the winners would go through, and when ML would show up - right on time despite the conditions! I decided not to cheer him on, as he'd probably be perplexed and worried about what the hell I'm doing in transition.

I had been hydrating like crazy the whole time, which was a bit of a mistake. I started out on the run and immediately earned myself the worst stitch ever. I hobbled and walked until at least the 2km mark, which was really like getting kicked when you're already down. Finally started running again when my club-mate SC caught up to me. She had been faster than me on the run at the Woodstock Sprint, so I didn't want to mislead her by taking off at a faster pace; I told her I skipped the bike ride so she shouldn't let me pace her. At this point, I had much respect for anyone who could do this 10km run after the sweltering hilly bike course. Up to the turnaround, I still felt fine, but on the way back I really started to fall apart. I just wanted to finish this run because my next attempt at an Oly would be in Bracebridge, also a hilly Muskokan area, and quite possibly just as hot. I had turned this into a training run.

I got some praise from ML for continuing on the run even though it was unofficial. But I just wanted to get as much of my money's worth as possible, and I couldn't shy away from the difficult conditions if I wanted to do a good job in Bracebridge.

Swim: 34:53 / 2:20
T1: 2:51
Bike: -
T2: -
Run:  59:26 / 5:57

The times are quite dismal; kind of glad they are unofficial!

Huronia Sprint Triathlon

I got a really bad head cold just before this race. I had been away for a few weeks with almost no way of training, and with my first ever Olympic-distance tri the following weekend, I really meant for this Sprint to be a warm-up both physically and mentally. But by the time I got to my parents' place in Bolton (to cut the trip to Penetanguishene short), I could no longer breathe through my nose and was running a major fever.

I woke up somewhere in the middle of the night gasping for air and seriously reconsidering doing this race. But I was also terrified of attempting an Olympic, in hilly Muskoka no less, without any training for nearly a month. I spent several hours tossing and turning and going back and forth with pros and cons. Suddenly, in a feverish dream, in the mists of dawn, a light bulb went off in my head. I always use NeoCitran (or a similar dissolving acetaminophen-based hot drink) to nurse myself back to life when I have a cold. I always complain about how sweet these drinks are - half the powder is pure sugar granules. But I would need a sugary drink on the bike anyway! Why not just cook up some of this mix, cool it down, and throw it in my bike bottle? I'd have cold medicine and sugar at the same time!

It was done; I mixed the mix and got on the road to Midland. There was a Kids of Steel series and a Give-It-a-Tri happening before our race, so I slowly and sleepily set up my gear as a bunch of speedy kids rushed by on their run course. I was so overheated and woozy. Everyone was pulling on their wetsuits, but I figured if I did wrap myself in neoprene on top of my fever, I might burst into flames. I waded into Penetang Bay, and I swear steam came off me. Right before the race, I downed a Tylenol pill along with my start gel and took off.

The waters of Penetang Bay deserve honourable mention. It's so weedy there, that you actually can't see the bottom at all. It's its own special biosphere down there, and really cool to see once you get over the constant gentle caresses of the weeds. If you try to stand in it, you will sink another few feet down through the vegetation and never hit bottom anyways. I just remembered my roomie's old mantra of getting through weedy waters, "They love you! They're caressing you with LOVE!"

I had tried to practice my mounting/dismounting tricks ahead of this race, but it turned into a bit of a disaster at the mount line. I jumped on but could not get my feet onto/into the shoes and totally stalled out! Had to get off, get out of the way, and try again. How embarrassing. Thankfully the photographer was further down!

The swim probably did a lot more for cooling me off than the pills did. I still wasn't able to breathe through my nose at all. I found myself wheezing heavily through my mouth. But I had nothing to lose here in my condition, so I hammered hard through the 20km course. It started up a hill to get to the plateau above the bay, but I gritted my teeth and got to the top. I don't remember much of the flat ride, just that I pushed hard without a care in the world, other than constant sips of my life-juice full of NeoCitran. When I got back to the final downhill, I was way too scared to go into aero to take advantage of it. I saw one 55+ lady whoosh past me in full aero - she was at the bottom in mere seconds. Must be nice. But somehow I passed a few people on this section anyway, so without knowing it, I was now in 3rd place.

The run course was essentially flat except for a short light uphill at the start. I was really focused here. Still sounded like I would need to be resuscitated in short order, but I can pull off a decent run no matter the circumstances. I did not see a single other 30-34 runner along the course, which made the race seem really lonely. Where was everyone? I knew that I was either doing really well or really really badly. Because I had no idea where I was, I just managed my pace like any other 5km race. I took Heed at every one of the very well-spaced aid stations. I had transitioned to a kind of mouth-nose wheeze at this point. In the final straight-away and downhill, I picked out some targets for kicks, caught them, and passed them. This included a male IM Florida finisher, whom I handily out-sprinted to the finish.

I somehow had a good feeling about this race. I collected my stuff, but came back from the car just in time for the awards. I made sure to be out of the free burger line when our age group came up. They called my name! I was 3rd! Wow. In my condition. I was so thrilled, but actually I think because I was so messed up, I wasn't nervous about my performance and just went all-out to the best of my ability.

So. Many hours later. At home with my medal. I suddenly had a thought. That NeoCitran doesn't just have acetaminophen in it, does it? There's some other junk in the formulation. I pulled out a packet: 60mg pseudoephedrine. That doesn't sound good! A quick perusal of the WADA Prohibited Substances list, and lo! pseudoephedrine is quite obviously on the list under stimulants. It is "prohibited when its concentration in urine is greater than 150 micrograms per milliliter." Admittedly I have no idea what kind of concentration I could clock by drinking maybe half of my mix over the course of 40 minutes, but let's face it: I had this stuff right on the bike during the race.

In the frenzy around Lance Armstrong's doping allegations, I read one article about how out-of-competition doping has become so sophisticated, there is no longer a need to use during competition - so if you fail an in-competition drug test, you're basically failing an IQ test! That actually made me laugh at myself.

Obviously there are no drug tests in this small local race series, and I obviously didn't mean to do this on purpose (although that's not exactly a sound argument!) The only thing I can say is that the person in 4th place was a full 8:31 behind me on this short sprint course. Her bike time was 48:46 and her run was 26:53, which I cannot imagine clocking under the worst possible circumstances, especially not on my racing bike. The medicine didn't clear up my fever, and I couldn't breathe properly the entire time. So I'm quite confident that I wasn't appreciably helped by the 30-60mg pseudoephedrine I might have ingested.

But I still feel really bad about it on principle. I will obviously never do this again. Or I will try never to implement any brilliant ideas I might have in the early hours of the morning while my head is on fire and I'm drowning in snot.

Swim - 17:39 / 2:22
T1 - 1:38
Bike - 43:00 / 27.9
T2 - 1:24
Run - 24:27 / 4:54

	S	T1	B	T2	R	F
Place in Discipline	5	2	2	4	3	3
Place in Real Time	5	6	3	3	3	3

--Distance: 25.75km
--Duration: 1:28:05

Bike Transition Skills

After my debacle at the mount line of not being able to get on my pedals and clip in, I am starting to take very seriously my buddy ML's admonition that jumping onto shoes that are already attached to the pedals is the way to go. I know there is some trick with elastic bands that hold your shoes level on the bike, but I will have to do a session with him to get through that.

Tonight I took my bike down the street to the Waterfront Trail, the 1.1km site of my ultra-short try-tri brick workouts last year, just to practise handling the bike safely while reaching down to my shoes with my hands, etc.

Dude reaching for his shoes. (those are my exact bike and shoes!)

New Skillz practised, mostly did each over and over for the 1.1km length or more:

• reaching down with hand to shoe loop
• reaching down and holding loop for a few seconds
• pulling strap off
• pulling strap back across
• nice tight turns at the turn-arounds
• pulling feet out of shoes (I lost a shoe a couple of times, and it dragged on the ground)
• pedalling on top of shoes
• running while holding the bike's saddle
• steering the bike by pulling the saddle in and pushing it away
• getting onto bike with the right foot in the shoe
• reaching down and pulling the loop up, re-strapping shoe
• kicking into the other shoe, which was extremely difficult with it hanging upside-down! (this is where the stupid elastics come in)

Other Skillz I threw in:

• checking over my shoulders while in aero
• making turns on a slight downhill in aero
• going over rough ground in aero

Wow, all this took probably an hour, but I got so confident so quickly! At the start, I didn't think I could reach all the way to my foot at all without falling over, especially on the left side, as for some reason I've grown accustomed to doing stuff with my right and holding the bike with my left - right down to switching the left gears with my right hand! (Don't mock me.) But I took to this constant reaching down very quickly. I could even do it from aero safely at the end.

I read that while you're doing each of the skills for each shoe, you should break up each action by pedalling for 15secs or so,  to keep a decent speed up so you can be more stable. So the above skills were done by taking a few pedal strokes in between each, but I'll have to pedal more IRL.

At the end, I did one more out-and-back ride at full speed, just cause I wanted to fly on the straight-away. (:

--Distance: ~20K, but lost count of the back-and-forths
--Duration: ~60mins, dunno

When I got back home, I went for a ~1K running loop around the block to shake out my legs. I realized from the race photos that I'd basically forgotten how to run. Gah. So I focused heavily on skills - midfoot striking, abducting my knees, more bounding strides. I didn't feel pain, but I did have a kind of tightness through the left hamstring, like I still can't open up my stride. Baby steps.

MultiSport Canada Sprint Triathlon - Woodstock

The Woodstock Sprint was my first triathlon of the season, first open water swim, first race for my Cervélo P2, and first race since the Yonge Street 10K, which had put me out of running commission for the past 5 weeks. Also my first race with my tri buddy ML, who's been encouraging me and "coaching" me ever since we met by chance standing waist-deep in Lake Ontario at a swim clinic last summer. I was considering switching to the Swim/Bike race, but as I felt better closer to the race, I thought I'd start in the Tri and see what happens.

The official water temperature was 22°, and since I loathe putting on and taking off my wetsuit, I decided to dip a foot in the pond-like Pittock reservoir to test it out. It felt warm like pool water. I hesitated a bit, and looking around, realized that basically everyone was donning their wetsuits. I mulled it over a bit more, but finally decided that this would be a "naked" swim for me. It would be only 500m, so I figured that any time I would gain along that distance would be annihilated in T1 when I'd get stuck in my wetsuit. I jumped in for a few hundred meters of warm-up, and I felt amazing. My new Aquasphere Kaiman goggles were great - I got the bad-ass mirrored lenses this time, way cool. I was also wearing my new Garmin 910XT watch (a.k.a. The Satellite Dish), and it was in Multisport Mode, so I was able to track each discipline plus transitions separately (although couldn't figure out the read-out, so all I'd get is periodic lap reminders, haha).

ML was starting 2 waves and 8mins ahead, so I cheered him off. I did some running ABCs and felt okay. Once we started, it was quite a frenzy in the murky waters, but that's the way I like it. ML had reminded me to pick some sighting points ahead of time, as the bright buoys are hard to see - thank goodness, because I immediately picked out a huge tree in the distance, and that would carry me perfectly straight to the first turn - best sighting ever! I was sprinting this swim, and all I could think was how long can I keep this up before I run out of breath? My strokes felt amazing, but I had no idea how I was doing, as I couldn't really see my competition over the splashing and thrashing. Turns out I finished way back in 8th out of 11.

On the exit, I used my friend CM's advice not to run out of the water, but to let my heart rate calm a bit. I still had a fun time getting my bike shoes on (noob!), but without the dreaded wetsuit, I moved up two spots to 6th on the way out of T1. Shoulda seen me try to get on my bike though - could not click my left pedal, how embarrassing!

The bike course was 20K of what seemed like light rollers, although looking at the elevation profile, it was uphill-rolling-downhill-rolling-uphill-downhill. I'm realizing more and more how much of a misconception I have of elevation on the bike! I decided to hammer this ride as much as I did the swim. I was only passed by two people along the course, one of whom I thought I was racing (she was just out of my AG), so I kept up with her just in case. Positive points developed at training camp: confidence in aero, confidence at high speed, going into rollers at good cadence, being able to check behind me in aero before passing. The ride was thrilling because of how fast this bike can fly. It's like I was cheating. I moved up another two spots into 4th off the bike.

The run was only 4K, but it was so hot at this point. Having not done any brick workouts like last year, I was dragging my legs. I was a bit worried that I'd killed them on the bike, but I also knew that in a field of triathletes, I can always pull a decent run out of my butt regardless of energy. It was a nice course through a park and I passed a bunch of people, but also got passed. I finally started to accelerate with about 500m to go, and I realized I was getting chased by one woman. I know I can out-sprint pretty much anyone at the finish, and that is what I did. Thank goodness - I hung onto 3rd place by 5secs!!

I can't believe I actually placed; I think it was a combination of concerted training in the past few months and sheer luck as to who showed up to my AG. I'd been dreaming of standing on a podium at the MSC series ever since my sprint last year, when I realized I can outrun many other triathletes. It seemed like an impossible dream to catch up in swimming, and especially in biking (and transitions!), but here it is. I'm gonna like this sport.

Official times for 500m / 20K / 4K

12:03 / 1:13 / 41:17 / 0:58 / 19:52

= 1:15:20

I have to pull my actual swim time off my Garmin, sans run-in to T1. I have a feeling I was faster than that in the actual water!
I am quite impressed with my ride time, but I think my bike did most of the work, haha.
A slow run time (should have been closer to 18:00), but with 5 weeks off, I'll take it. Watch out, triathletes - my running legs are making a comeback!

	S	T1	B	T2	R	F
Place in Discipline	8	3	3	3	3	3
Place in Real Time	8	6	4	4	3	3

So looks like other than the naked swim, I was consistently 3rd through the rest of the race.
And if I extrapolate to normal sprint distances and compare to my sprint last year, I would have been 3rd in that race too (as opposed to 12th), despite a much slower swim and run as well. But the racing bike obviously beat the pants off my commuter, haha. Until the next real sprint in July, I'm gonna chalk the slow times up to not using the wetsuit and to being off running.