Did The Nation's Triathlon (Olympic Distance) in Washington DC on September 14th. What a great race! The entire bike and run courses were completely closed to vehicular traffic. The course was just spectacular. There were 3500 athletes making it the 2nd largest urban triathlon in the nation, behind St. Anthony's in St. Pete. The swim was in the (Ugghh) Potomac River. A very dirty body of water but, surprisingly, you didn't really notice it. You entered the river and swam out to tread water before the "in water" start. You swam up river against a slight current and underneath the bridge that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the Arlington Cemetary. You continued to swim for maybe 200 yds and then took a left to the turn buoy, made another left and swam back under the bridge with the slight current helping you along. It was really surprising to see the large number of athletes losing direction and swimming way off course..the sunlight was a problem for vision but didn't really explain the difficulty that many swimmers had on this day. Fortunately, I swam true and had a quick swim. There was a long run to transition...the best organized transition area in any race I've ever done...each bike row marked with a large colorful banner with individual row number...and then off for a beautiful ride past many monuments and memorials onto the Clara Barton roadway along the river...very nice...and no cars! Man, that was just really great. Unfortunately, it was very, very hot. In fact, they set a new record high for temperature on this day in Wash DC. I jumped off the bike and ran into transition and knew I was in trouble. I immediately cramped up in both legs. It was very difficult to run for the first mile...I was seriously dehydrated. I probably started down the road to dehydration during the swim. It was really too warm for a wetsuit...they must have searched long and deep to find a cold pocket of water. I'm sure it became increasingly worse during the bike...but I didn't feel it until I started the run. It was all down hill from that point. I've read a number of articles in medical journals that state that diabetics are particularly susceptible to heat related problems. This may have been what was going on here. I've noticed that as I've gotten older, starting around age 48, my ability to endure significant heat during long distances has become problematic. Recently, this has only really been a problem for me during the run portion of longer races in Florida in the summer months...but in Wash DC on this day the temp was 95 and it was very humid. Notwithstanding my poor run performance, the run course was spectatcular. We ran along the river and then past several memorials and monuments and finished running along Pennsylvania Ave with the Capital Building behind us. This made for really great pictures at the finish line. While in Washington we were able to climb the Washington Monument and went to the Lincoln, Vietnam, Korea, and World War II memorials as well as the Space museum and Portait Gallery. Really nice trip.

As soon as I returned I had business travel to Boston, Tennessee, California and the Virgin Islands (St. Thomas). This made it really difficult to get my planned training accomplished for the remainder of September. I was able to run in Boston and Tennessee and did some open water swimming in St. Thomas, but I fell really behind in my training log. Now that I'm back and with only 2 1/2 weeks before the big race I need to buckle down and devote some serious time getting up to speed and getting prepared.