A promising start with a strong swim and good bike but a hot day for a run meant my 2nd place was lost to my old rival Andy Cox in the last 25m!

Sylvan Beach Olympic Tri takes place at La Porte near Houston.  Last year the swim leg was cancelled due to a fish kill in the area and turned into a Duathlon - two lots of running, my weakest discipline!  This year the sun rose on calm, warm and clean seas - a perfect day for an ocean swim.  I was feeling a little 'flat', and I was probabaly still feeling the effects from the previous weekend's IMCT 70.3 and all those hills!  Not helped by the fact we'd been to a dinner party the night before and I got to bed sober but much later than I probably should have done...

Once in the water I had a good swim, kept out to the left of the pack which allowed me to get into a solid rythm and I was out of the water in 33:26.  My bike leg was slow to ramp up, legs felt a bit dead but managed to average 20.9mph and get off in 1:11:06.  

Then the run.  By now the sun was well up and it was a hot road run with little shade.  Temperatures were into the 90s and there was just one manned water station on a two loop course - fortunately I had my run belt with two bottle of INFINIT run mix to keep me going most of way and a quick gulp of Gatorade on loop two as well as a spray of water from somebody with a hose.

With 2 miles to go my friend and rival Andy Cox came into view.  His run time is about 1m/mile faster than me but my swim time for 1500m is normally around 8-10mins faster and I had got off the bike with a decent lead.  All I had to do was keep the gap but my legs were still somewhere in Connecticut...

We rounded the corner for the last 150m and I still had the lead.  As we got to the beach and the final sand run to the finish i missed the course and had to dodge back on track - that and the loss of rythm allowed Andy to close and in the last 25-30m he put on a final spurt to beat me by 9 seconds and take 2nd place.  Oh well, it gave home some revenge for Silverlake last month where I beat him to get 1st place!

2:59:46 for the full race and another podium for Team INFINIT Performance.