Wasa followup, results, thoughts, ect

Given how my head is feeling at the moment, this might mostly be ect. I picked up a runny nose today. I could blame the lake water, or some anonymous work colleague. hmmmm.

Here are the raw numbers. Here's a link to the results, but I don't know how long it will be good.

Lets see if I can copy paste and make it look half decent.

Place overall      247/493 

Place gender       163/255   

Place age group    15/24   

Rank water overall 111  

Rank water AG      8 

Time water         28:49 

(this is to the transition gate, including wetsuit stripping)

Rank off the bike overall   233

Rank off the bike age group 14

Bike split         1:20:15  

(includes the longest pee of my life, and two transitions)

Rank run overall   329   

Rank run age group 20 

Run split          57:30 

Overall time       2:46:32.97

Ok, here goes thoughts, in no particular order:

• Once again I lost ground throughout the race to my peers. This has been my pattern from the beginning, since I've been swimming longer than I've been doing the other sports. But what's important to me is that I lost much less ground than in previous races.
• I'd love to see a fancy histogram where the results are plotted on a series of bell curves, with me marked. I know how perfectly well, but I'm lazy, and would rather train to improve the numbers than massage them. Compared to my age group for the swim, (and pity here wasn't 25 of us because that would have made the math easier) I'm in the second quintile. I'm in the third quintile for the bike, and for the run I'm in the last quintile. That is huge improvement. Last year I was usually about the first third for the swim then languished in the bottom quintile for the rest of the race.
• I goofed in the first transition by forgetting my number belt. It was right in plain sight. Next time I'll put it on top of my shoes. That's probably another minute there, maybe two.
• The more I think about how I felt on the bike the happier I am about it. During the ride I wasn't feeling strong and smooth like I'd hoped. Having lots of people pass me was a bit depressing since I'd hoped to be keeping up to the pace better. Still, I didn't get down on myself about it. I kept reminding myself that I was on pace for my goal results, and given the tough time I've been having on the bike for much of this year so far, I was doing good. Now that I look at the numbers more carefully, I wasn't as badly off the pace as I thought. There were a clump of us right around the 1:20 mark. You can bet I'll be spending lots of time on the bike over the next while.
• To have only 6 people pass me on the run is fantastic for my state of mind! There were people I passed on the run that I remembered passing me on the bike, and that felt so sweet. I knew I could run a sub 1 hr 10 K since I've done it in practice, but that's not the same. Doing it in a race after a bike is a huge confidence builder for me. Still, compared to my peers I need to take another 5 minutes off that.
• Nutrition isn't a big deal, but I had a Gu before the swim, another about the 30K mark on the bike, and about 5 or 6 K on the run, just before a water station. Plus nearly a full bottle of my energy drink on the bike.
• The temperatures were very good for me. The bike start was cool, and ended up warm. The run was warm enough that I paid good attention to hydration and pouring water on my head, but I wouldn't call it hot.
• This is the first race where I actually raced my plan.

Ect:

• Thank you for all the nice things you've said in comments!
• Woke up feeling a bit creaky this morning. In hindsight maybe I should have taken today off work. 
• Swam 55 minutes today, taking it a bit easy. Mostly it felt good, but I was taking an extra stroke per length, sometimes more. One length, one of the few harder ones, it felt like I was churning the water and not getting anywhere.
• Water ran 15 minutes and kind of ran out of steam. Stretched out my hips for 10 minutes and worked on range of motion, which is worse than I remember it being. Then another 5 minutes water running easy.
• Walked 45 minutes pushing the lawnmower and waving the weed whacker. 
• I've already sent a thank you note to the race director. He and his people did a fantastic job! They put on a great event.
• I need to do laundry, and wash dishes and a few other odds and ends, and still hope to get to bed early. Compared to Jenna my life is slack, filled with great gobs of empty time where I can actually sit and consider what to do next, or pause for a moment of quiet thought. But for me it's pretty busy.