I went down to Phoenix this weekend to race the Soma HIM. Unfortunately my race ended pretty quickly. The pace of the swim start was a bit too quick for me and I got dropped fairly quickly. Following that I ended up taking a terrible line on the way out and had to back track for the turn buoy. Then after rounding the turn buoy I essentially did the same thing on the way back.

I came out about 4+ minutes down from the pack (but not the lead swimmer). I spent the first 15-20 minutes of the bike feeling frustrated and sorry for myself, but then I came round and just rode the bike at a hard tempo. Following that, I went out and ran at IM effort and felt pretty good.

I had two goals with racing Soma:

1) To race well and try and get top 3; or my back up goal was:

2) To have a bad race.

This might not make much sense, but I tend to get flustered when I haven't been racing often (9 weeks now). To be competitive with the talent around me I have to be as focused as possible from start to finish. Its also challenging to stay motivated this late season, but losing a race in the first five minutes relit a fire in me.

I have four weeks to turn around all the mistakes I made yesterday. I'll get to work tomorrow.