St Anthony's tri, er, duathlon - sort of

So, the winds picked up on Saturday in St Pete, just as predicted on the Weather Channel. I wasn't too concerned about the wind - after surviving Kona in October and getting through New Orleans 70.3, I felt it wasn't going to be anything new. Get to transition on Sunday morning, doing the normal bike checks and finishing touches and the announcement comes, the swim for the amateurs is cancelled. The girls in my wave were all sort of standing around wondering if it was a joke and if the elites would get the option to swim. No joke, no option, no swim for us. I've been busting my butt and swimming quite well (in the pool) for me so ready to get a new PR for this course. Not to be and the rest of the day was very strange to say the least. The Bay was a washing machine and the pro's, who had to swim, echoed this for the most part. I had a nice long run warm up with Cassie M then we headed for the "line up" for our time trial start. A start I've never done as I'm sure most people here hadn't. Totally not warmed up, we sprinted through transition, got our bikes and started the bike portion of the race as if it was a normal race. It wasn't. It's really hard to go into the bike hurt box with no warm up. That said, we were all in the same boat. I rode really hard at the outset, wanting to get warmed up in a hurry. It was quite windy but not as bad as New Orleans, IMO. I settled down into my pre-planned power zones and went for a new bike PR for the course. A few packs of girls got away but I had a couple girls that wanted to keep trading the lead and we did the last ten miles or so legally pacing which kept me engaged mentally. Got off the bike and had my usual slow transition but got out onto the run and didn't feel hot but I've come to the conclusion, I'm not supposed to feel good off the bike if I ride hard enough. Settle in around 6:30 pace but gradually slowed and wanted to be done! I got passed in the finish shoot and though not happy about it, I couldn't do anything. Felt bad because Brian Harrington was saying such nice things about me (Bri, thank him for me!). I wasn't happy about my overall result but the positive is I biked a PR and ran about 2 minutes faster than last year. We can all pontificate about what the swim would have done or not done but the result is what it is for everyone. I likely won't do this race next year because of New Orleans 70.3 which is going to be one week prior and I know I can't recover that fast - I barely recovered enough in three weeks! Age is a real buzz kill! The Dane got his top ten finish and hardware he so desired and his body is ok so we can move on. We will do some open water swimming and see what 70.3 races we can do to get the Dane into Clearwater since Disney is closed. We had a lot of fun post race hanging out with everyone and trading war stories and made sure the beer tent volunteers were busy and entertained! Thanks to everyone who cheered me on and if I didn't acknowledge you, I heard you! Onward.