I really wish this global warming thing could have kicked in this weekend, because that was one cold mutha of a race.  When I turned into Devil's Lake State Park, my car thermometer read 33 degrees... but at least it was above freezing.  Foolishly I had left most of my cold weather biking gear at home.  I had sleeveless Under Armor, and a sleeveless tri jersey.  Things weren't looking good.  I think it was around 6:45 AM that I stopped feeling my toes.  But hey, who needs to feel their toes anyway?

Sadly I forgot my camera, because the view of the lake was incredible.  The water temperature was in the 70's, but the air temperature still hadn't hit 40 yet, and so there was a fog over the entire lake.  It looked like a Devil's caldron, but had finally cleared once the sun hit for the 8AM start.

My swim was solid, and the warm water was certainly welcome.  But getting out of the water back into the cold air wasn't great, especially since I had to run barefoot on frosty ground.  I took the unusual step of toweling off a bit, figuring that evaporating water on the bike would only get me colder.  So my first transition was a little longer than I would have liked, but in the end I made up for the time.

Devil's Challenge has 4 difficult climbs you have to conquer, and I was amazed at how well I did on each one.  I powered up each one, and passed people on all of them.  By the time I had gotten to the second transition, I still couldn't feel my toes (and my arms were wind burnt), but I was doing well otherwise.  When I got to the run, my feet felt like bricks attached to my ankles.  I finally felt my feet about halfway through the run course.  Despite this, I had my best run time ever.  I have no idea where the energy came from.

My final result was to take 4 minutes off my personal record on the course.  I was fairly competitive in my age group too.  If I can only learn to descend faster down those hills, I could have taken even more time.  But that's a skill for next year.  But I'm thrilled with how well I did, especially on the climbs.  Here is the break down on my time, and here are the results for the field.