New Orleans 70.3-Early Start

New Orleans 70.3

Swim: 26:16  14th fastest split
Swim was one of those deals where you feel good and think you're swimming well during the race, but then looking at the results after you realize it wasn't as good as you thought.  A little surprised how much time I lost here.

Bike: 2:14:05  14th fastest split
Power file: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/311306000
Dead flat entire way with a decent headwind first half/tailwind second half.  Started the bike with a group of 4 and pushed harder than I wanted the first half because I knew I didn't want to get separated with the headwind.  Hit the turnaround and felt my strongest all day from 30-45 miles, was able to drop 2 of the guys with the tailwind.  First time racing with a powermeter, ended up not really paying attention to it and just collected the data after.

Run: 1:17:55  13th fastest split
Pretty ideal run conditions, ran almost the entire way by myself.  Happy I didn't feel too terrible off the bike since I really haven't done any bricks this year.  Overall a better run than I thought coming in, had great speed last half mile to makeup two positions at the very end.

Overall: 4:01:16  12th place
Overall I feel my race was a pretty accurate reflection of my current fitness, I just haven't done the volume of work to be competitive yet.  Swim was a little worse than I guessed, bike about what I thought, run a little better than I guessed.  I knew going in to the race there was a very slim chance of being competitive, but thanks to Ron it was logistically a pretty simple and fun trip.  And ultimately a bad result is no worse than not racing at all.  Plus now I have data from my power meter to utilize going forward.  This is the earliest I've ever done my first big race of the year and did so coming off the longest winter I've ever had to train through.
Here are bike stats off my Garmin
Time: 2:13:xx
25.2mph
Normalized power: 281w
Average power: 277w
Average heart rate: 159
Average cadence: 88
Normalized power first half (headwind): 285
Normalized power second half (tailwind): 277