JoJo - Great race report. Reading it brought tears to my eyes as I remember my first IM experience at CDA in 2007. You will never forget it - I can still remember how I felt when I crossed that line! But then, I'm going to do it again in Canada in 2009!!!

Congrats on the run PR.

Does your friend know what song was playing when she hit the tape? Neither my husband nor I know. I think there were two females or at least a male and female in front of me. Of course I wanted the selfish ST solo finishing picture, so I made sure I did not catch the people in front and I made sure I was ahead of the next person.

This was my first IM so I was happy. I'm a slow swimmer and each of my each of my bike splits were faster, but still on in the 16's. I think I took it too easy on the bike, but I had know idea of what to expect. My run was in the 4:30's. I really wanted a 4 hour run, but my run mileage from April 30 - June 22 was 113.7 miles due to injury and this included CdA and a 1/2 IM. I walked through every aid station and thanked the wonder volunteers.

The best volunteers were the two ladies dressing me in T1.

This was a great race and looking forwarding to maybe IMOO in 2009.

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Lisa Walser-Anderson, ATC,CSCS

JOJO,

Don't ever think that your time isn't impressive. It is impressive that you met your goal. Time is all relative to the person doing the race. The challenges you went through doing a cold swim, hilly course are yours and are completely different from what I, personally cooking on the run, or anyone else went through. You had a great day and conquered the course using all the tools you had available to you. Congratulations.

PS. I had a problem with a top under my wetsuit being too tight and recovered by pulling it up as high as I could in the first 300 meters (2 piece desoto wetsuit) in order to breathe. Do you think the thermal top might have caused compression around your diaphram and stomach?

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it turns out that our OP is only "mostly" dead........ ElGordo

Greg: thanks for the support. It's so easy to always compare yourself to others, and when I'm in the BOP a lot, it gets a bit demoralizing. The course wasn't a good one for me, but it certainly was for others and more power to them! I'll look for more flat courses in the future. As for the constriction - yes, I do think the thermal top contributed. But even if I had done the swim in 1:35 as I was expecting, I started getting cold around 1:15 so I think it was a good thing to have worn it. I frequently find myself pulling my wetsuit half way off during swims so I can breathe - maybe I should stick to warm water as well as flat courses! I guess Cancun 70.3 is a possible race for me then!