Miami University triathlon race report

My first triathlon of the season, and it went great!  I'm just so happy with how everything went - it gives me some well needed confidence for the races this upcoming summer. 
Mark and I left Friday after work for the 4+ hour drive down to Miami University.  Luckily, Mark got off work a little early, so he was able to pack everything up so we were ready to go when I got home.  We hit the road at about 6:15 PM and got down to Oxford at about 10:30.  We didn't stop for dinner, so I ended up having pretzels & caffeine free coke for dinner (healthy pre- race dinner!).  We had some trouble finding the hotel when we got there, but after about 15 min, we found it thanks to Mark's eagle eye. 
When we checked in, the receptionist said she was taking a poll on how many hours per week people train.  I figured since Mark and I were training for an ironman, we'd be close to the top.  But NO - someone had already checked in and said they trained for 1.5 hours 15 times per week!  Unbelievable.  That beat me by quite a lot!
Anyway - the Comfort Inn in Oxford was nice, although Mark had to get up at about midnight to go out to the truck to get some ear plugs for both of us.  The hotel was quiet except for the room next to us, where the people had the tv blasting.  Knowing we had to get up at 5AM, we needed some sleep!  The ear plugs worked. 
We got up at 5AM and found out it was only 41 degrees outside, and not expected to get any warmer for the morning.  Luckily, I had brought clothes for all kinds of weather.  So I layered up and we headed for the race.  We left the hotel at about 5:30 AM, so got there early and got a great parking place.  We picked up our numbers, chips and set up our bikes.  The hard part was taking all the warm clothes off to head to the pool in a swimsuit and bare feet.  But the building was warm and the pool water was pretty warm at 79.9 degrees.  We listened to the triathlon instructions and then got in line for the start.  It's a staggered start, and the swim is a serpentine style swim covering 400 meters in a 50 meter pool (8 lengths in a serpentine style swim).  It's actually a very ingeneous way to swim a pool tri and works great, even though there are about 600 people competing.  They send the swimmers off every 3 seconds and it worked beautifully.  I never felt crowded in the pool.  I think 2 people passed me and I passed 2 people, so I finished about even in 9 minutes.  Kind of slow, but I'm not that great of a swimmer so I don't try to go all out on the swim.
I then headed into transition to layer up.  I was a little warm from the swim, so only put on biking shorts, some arm warmers and a vest.  I then headed out with a 2:35 transition time.  I had my sunglasses and biking gloves on the bike, so I put those on while I was starting to ride.  I wasn't as cold on the bike as I thought I'd be and I was able to finish in 45:05, which I was happy with considering there are a couple of good size hills on the course. 
Mark had said at the beginning that he thought he'd be done before I started the run, so he thought he could do the run with me.  I didn't see him as I headed in and was able to transition from the bike to the run in under a minute.  I started the run feeling pretty good and didn't see Mark until I was about 1/2 mile into the run.  He finished and came back out and was able to run the last 1/2 mile or so with me.  I ended up running pretty well and more importantly, I felt great.  I had no pain whatsoever and just felt really good.
Overall, I finished the race in 1:21:47 compared with 1:24:09 2 years ago (pre-breast cancer).  That just made my day - being able to do a race faster than I did before going thru four surgeries, a staph infection and undergoing treatment for breast cancer.  What a great feeling! 
And you can ask Mark ... I was literally singing on the drive home!