Hey guys, thanks for all of everyones support this season. I couldn't have done it without all my training partners, family and friends. I want to especially thank Drew and Lauren Dykens from Chicago for opening their home to me to for a place to crash for the race. thanks again guys. It's awesome people like the Dykens that help make it possible for athletes like myself to make it to races. they had just gotten a new Siberian Husky puppy a few months before I got there. I really enjoyed playing with Bella. I wish my labs were still in the puppy stage:( Chicago is a really sweet city. If you ever have the chance to pass through GO! Chicago doesn't really have the "big city attitude" like New York or LA. Everyone is so chill in Chicago. As for as the race goes, it started with a very early morning as most of you know how race days begins. I love race days since i get to enjoy my other passion... coffee. em' good. after coffee, some banana's and peanut butter i rode down to transition to rack all my gear. It was really convenient how close Drew and Lauren lived to transition. It was only a few miles down Lake Shore Drive. If you guys didn't know, the Accenture Chicago Triathlon is the largest triathlon in the world. 8,700 athletes competed on the same course in two different distance, a sprint and an olympic. I can't remember ever seeing a transition area this big. people were everywhere. The race directors started waves at 6am. The sprint distance athletes were the first to go off. to give you an idea of how big this event is, they started the first wave at 6am, there were 54 waves in all. i didn't go off until the 46th wave at 9:21. So I got the pleasure of sitting around for 5 hours, carrying around my wetsuit, barefoot. Finally, when it was time to race, we raced. The swim to run transition was exceptionally long. The bike course was packed with slower age groupers (no offense guys) and it was hard to blast the bike without being to dangerous. Coming off a 58 minute bike split I was leading my age group by half a minute. In transition i had trouble finding my rack to ditch the two wheeled apparatus and put on my runners. Once I finally found my rack and put on my shoes and the lead I had built diminished to a few seconds. Running out of transition, the tongue on my right shoe was folded underneath itself and was killing me. I had to stop within the first quarter mile to fix it. By now I had been caught. Now it was a fight for the lead. The other athlete made the mistake of getting a half stride ahead and i jumped in behind him and made him pull me all the way to the 5k turn around. When we made to turn I jumped in front since his pace was slowing and really started hammering trying to pop him. He never faded after a few accelerations so I settled in to a fast tempo hoping he would blow up and praying that i didn't! It was nice on the way back because the sun was now behind us and I could easily see his shadow and tell if he was still there. about a half mile from the finish i knew there was a down hill section and i was going to start my sprint at the top so when i hit the flat my turnover was already going. It worked! It must have caught him off guard and i was able to out sprint him to the line for second.