2020 New Roads Tri Fest - TOP 10 FINISH & 1ST PLACE in AG!!!

Where to begin?! What an amazing race and experience. First time EVER winning my age-group at a triathlon!!! Interestingly, nothing really stood out with each individual event, yet there were no glaring deficits either. That tells me it was a complete race from start to finish. A solid swim, despite actually having to breaststroke for probably 20-30s or so to catch my breath and recollect myself due to an unexpected composure breakdown. But once I got around the buoy I freestyled the whole way and stayed streamlined and on top of the water while minimizing sightings to shave off more seconds. When I saw my watch at 8:47 in a 400M open water swim and even with that little early mishap, I was like WHOA! Way better than I was expecting and surprisingly quite fast considering I actually had to slow down a little briefly to temper the nerves. So with that newfound in the moment confidence and having race experience working with me, I decided to carry this momentum into the bike and ride 21 mph or so to set up a solid sub-9 min pace run. Well I ended up averaging 20.8 for about 10.8-11 miles. It was supposed to be 10 miles, but sometimes these things happen and so you just roll with it, plus everyone else has to deal with that anyway (level playing field). Once I got off the bike I felt much better than I did at the freedom fest race earlier in the year. First of all, it wasn't as hot, but I'd say another factor was course familiarity along with utilizing an evidence-based pacing strategy of starting out a little under race pace for the first 0.62 miles or so and then picking it up thereafter. But since I was feeling good, I decided to possibly pick it up a little sooner because I felt I could. When I got to the mile turnaround, my watch said 8:22. Of course that's well under a sub-9 min mile pace, but I thought why stop there! So I decided to try and negative split the second mile and shave off some seconds. Well I ended up doing just that and ran the second mile in 8:05! So I had a good feeling about this race because on the run usually I see a lot of people already coming back while I'm still getting to the midpoint of the run. But in this race, I saw more people on the way back versus going out, and that was a good sign and gave me a feeling that I was in a position I normally don't find myself in at a triathlon, which is in the lead pack! So I ended up placing 1st in my age-group of 5 and 10th overall out of 122 triathletes!!! And to top it off, my good friend Evan Posey placed 3rd in his age-group and 20th overall, making this the first time we both placed at the same race! It was such a well organized and put together race by Michelle Forte and her team. The weather worked out so well and it was such a fun weekend competing in this inaugural triathlon festival!