Black Fly Race Report- 12 July 2009 Headed up to the Time Trial and packet pickup on Friday evening. Had dinner with the family at the local pizza joint. I had a large Greek Salad with Grilled Chix breast. This was a good light meal for me the night before the race. I had been hydrating well and fueling properly during my training week leading up to the race. Got to bed a little later than I would have liked at around 10:00. Had a very restless night’s sleep, and awoke at 3:30 AM Pre Race breakfast- I had two whole eggs with a whole wheat English muffin and 2 soy sausages at about 4:00 AM, with water. Took care of all the morning necessities, kept sipping water, and got on the road to head up to WV by 4:30. I had a relaxed ride up, thinking positive race and transition thoughts. I was really looking forward to enjoying the day. Upon arrival at 5:30 AM, I found a very convenient parking spot and began to calmly and methodically ready my gear, double check everything and then head to transition to set up. During setup, we found out the water temp was 53 and the swim had been shortened from a half mile to a quarter mile for safety reasons. I was a bit disappointed as I had been swimming in cold open water and was very prepared. I quickly put that aside and went about my business. I had an enjoyable time setting up transition, welcoming my club mates, and meeting my transition neighbors. At 7 AM I put on the wetsuit and proceeded down to the pond to acclimate for the upcoming swim. As it was an interval start, we had to be out of the pond by 7:25. I took my time acclimating to the cold temps, and then did a nice warm up, practicing nice smooth relaxed strokes, and worked on sighting to the buoys. I was feeling very good about the swim as the warm up time ended and I got out of the pond and enjoyed watching the swim start. My number was 382, so that gave me a good 35 minutes of waiting until I started my swim. Swim: The swim was relatively uneventful. There was a short period of adjustment back to the cold temp, but with minimal impact on getting started with nice long relaxed strokes. I started sighting right away, with one of my goals to sight much better than mooseman. There were a lot of swimmers on their backs, doing sidestroke, or breast stroke, so there was quite a bit of need to maneuver around swimmers. As I turned back into the sun, I did have a bit of trouble sighting. I hadn’t accounted for the sun coming up over the mountain for the swim, but with the time trial start, the sun was there. I didn’t have my mirrored goggles and thought I was on target when a kayaker pointed me to the right. I had missed sighting the correct buoy, and got back on track right away. This sighting error due to sun glare and the wrong equipment probably cost me a few seconds in the swim, but lesson learned. Before I knew it I was out of the water in 8:06 and into T1. T1 Wetsuit stripping went great, ditched my suit and easily slipped on my socks and bike shoes, popped on the sunglasses and helmet, took a drink of Gatorade and off I went. No gloves today, I just decided to ditch them, saved a lot of time on T1 as compared to last race. Out of T1 without any issues, mounted well and off on the bike course. Bike Started fueling right off with the GMEF. I pushed hard right off the bat to pass quite a few riders up the brief climb to start the long descent down to Campton. At the top of the descent I got comfortable in aero and took it easy on the way down. Stayed in the big gear, didn’t push it except to keep up the speed on a few rollers on the way down. Averaged about 26+ down to the turn off of the main road. I hit the first steep hill and zipped right to the top in standing position as it is a short steep hill. Kept up the speed on this section to make the rollers smooth out, zipped up the last hill then made my turn to head back up to WV. I continued to pass many riders and was passed by very few. I started my ascent back up th