This win brought to you by Vaseline and denial

There's a fine line between satisfaction and complacency, optimism and denial, and when you're dealing with an ongoing deficiency of -reasons to be pissed off- you might not be able to distinguish one from the other. Case in point: I "won" the Nockamixon women’s 1/2 time trial. A more critical person might point out that there were only 3 people in my category, and that I was only the second fastest woman of the day, but at least the following goals were accomplished:

1. Beat my previous time

2. Practice TTing for upcoming stage races, and identify areas in need of work

3. Swim in Lake Nockamixon without getting caught by a park ranger

I pretty much smoked that list, beating the previous attempt on this course by 42 seconds.  It was great practice, and I now have plenty of things to work on, such as remembering to turn around at the cone instead of spacing out until the race marshals yell at me, and preemptively shoving an entire tube of Vaseline up my nose for the inevitable nosebleed when I get down in the aerobars (luckily no photos of this were taken).  So I’m in denial looking on the bright side and calling the day a success.  Now to do some left turn repeats for the next out-and-back time trial.

It turns out that skinsuits make very fast swimsuits