NB's Comments:

I would like to start off with the following…

Missing out on first place by 59 seconds sux.  I digress...

This race was the first of the five-race series... 

Since the race was at a park where they didn’t allow camping, brewer and I were in a pickle.  We needed a place to stay, but we didn’t want to drop the coin on a hotel room… ‘cause we’re cheap like that.  We called Kathy at Terra Firma, and she arranged for us to camp in a friend of hers back yard.  Even better was that aforementioned friend of Kathy allowed us to stay inside his house on an air mattress.  Worse was that brewer is very allergic to cats… and aforementioned friend had one… so brewer took in his ZZZs while I slumbered inside the air-conditioned house on the air mattress.

We arrived at the park and went through the usual motions… unload gear… set up gear in the TA (transition area)… get our packets… put on our numbers… blow up the boat seats… and on and on…

The first part of the race was a mile-and-a-half run to the boats.  Not much to a mile-and-a-half run, so we made good time.

The boat section was an out-and-back.  The “out” was into a nasty head wind… though, fortunately the “back” had the wind at our backs.  I reckon the total paddle was about a mile and half… but I am only guessing.  We made really good time here… and our pace really put us at the front of the pack.

Next was a run back to the TA, but it was apparent rather quickly I had really paddled too hard; I wasn’t dead, but I was pretty spent.  We still made good time back to the TA (I got some energy back with a half mile to go to the TA).

Onto the bikes we hopped, and I can assure you I was happy brewer told me to run street-oriented tires.  The majority of the ride was on a paved trail… we took turns pulling and drafting and made excellent time.  The single-track dirt section wasn’t much of a challenge, and we finished the fast-paced ride back to the TA without incident.

The final little test was a 2X4 walk… and it’s probably better if you scroll down and just look at the pictures… but the best thing was that we were able to pass another team during that section.

We crossed the finish line in under two hours and ended up getting second in the Male Masters division… we missed first by only 59 seconds.  But in the grand scheme of things, that only puts us 1 point back.  First place got 20 points, we got 19.  As long as we win the next ones… or as long as the same team doesn’t keep winning… we should do really well in the series.