Had my first attempt at the 1/2 IM distance while training for my first IM later this year. All three disciplines had been coming along nicely in training, so I was pretty excited to get out there and put them on the line.
Bottom line, the race was…mixed. If nothing else, it was certainly a learning experience!
First impression - I love tri bikes over road bikes! It was my second race on my new tri bike (see: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1222615;search_string=t14;#1222615) and it felt AWESOME! I was at first worried that I was too low up front, but through training found it super comfy and it feels rocket fast! They had a chase format for the race, so started slowest to fastest. It means you spend the whole race passing people no matter what speed you are 
But, I made a classic stupid move that I paid for. I have no one to blame but myself. For some reason I decided to not bring any spare tubes, tire levers, CO2, etc. I had never flatted before, what were the odds it would happen today? Well, guess what?! About 60km into the bike the back tire went. Fortunately I had someone special watching over me as a wonderful soul stopped and gave up her tube, levers, and CO2 adapter and cartridges and then continued on with her race. Talk about amazing! BUT, as I was inflating the tube, BLAM - it exploded! Talk about amazing. I was again lucky enough to flag down a second person who was willing to give up his spare tube. Such generosity on the course! This tube held fast and I managed to finish the race. Mind you, when I got back to the bike after the race, the other tire was flat too. WHAT THE HELL? (And I have lots of experience changing tires, tubes, etc. so I can’t imagine it was a rookie setup). Note the flat tire just before I pulled over. The look on my face isn’t actually fatigue, but disbelief! Well that and it’s near the top of the biggest hill on the course which I had just done with a flat tire.
http://i8.tinypic.com/5y396v8.jpg
As I am a big proponent of repaying kindness, the story has a happy ending. First of all, those two amazing people didn’t have any trouble of their own (thank goodness!) and I was able to get a spectator to take pictures of the two who stopped. After the race I found her, exchanged emails and so got the pictures. Was able to get their race numbers and then their names from the results. A web search led me to their emails. Turns out they are friends of each other! Nice circle of friends! So I’ve been in touch with them and have enough information to get them a thank you gift.
Otherwise the race went pretty well. Felt pretty good on the swim (though swallowed too much water with the slight chop I wasn’t used to) and the run felt great - I think I was running angry by that point. I was only 3 minutes off a PB for my stand alone 1/2 marathon time, and that included a quick stop in the woods to pee.
A few other things I learned:
- I don’t need a large breakfast to perform well (one packet of oatmeal and 1/2 banana). But this was after a couple solid days of loading and hydrating.
- MORE (salt pills) is MORE. I ran out about 1/3 of the way through the run and started to feel the effects towards the end as leg cramping started to creep in. Took one about every 30 minutes throughout the race and will bump that up next time (the weather was quite cool and forgiving too).
- Concentrated maltodextrin in one bottle with water in the others and a couple of gels works great! I’ve always had trouble with side stiches and I may have finally found the right formula for me!