Peregrine Charities Race Report - brrrr...it was a cold one!

I wasn't sure if I was going to make the trip down to Iowa since my sister's due date was the day of the race. However, I decided that since I had raced this race every year since it's start I wanted to go and support the race and the charity. The race director does an amazing job with volunteers, organization, and post race.
I like racing in the heat and it seems like it takes me forever to warm up. I knew that it was going to be a cold morning and to bring my warm weather gear. We had dinner with Hannah and David and David gave me some good advice that if I had any chance to get ahead of people I needed to bike my booty off so be warm on the bike. I decided I was going to wear my gloves and jacket no matter what!
Race morning it was about 45 degrees at the start and the water temp was about 63 degrees. I was trying out a new wetsuit to see if I liked it and if it helped my swim at all...turns out it didn't!!! I had been having some pain in my left shoulder and tried working it out with some massage but it was still bothering me. I tried hanging onto to some of the other women but I just didn't have any speed or pull - worst swim of the year! I was out there swimming all bymyself and need to just punish myself in the water - and not be comfortable....enough said. I got to my bike and knew I was about 2 minutes behind all the other women and opted not to put my gloves on since I thought it would take too much time - dumb move! Bike went great and had the fastest bike split and caught Janet right at the 35k mark. She had a great swim and was first women out of the water so I was glad I caught up to her. I came into T2 with about a minute ahead of her but she left before me because I couldn't get my helmet off or my feet into my shoes - my hands were so frozen. I finally ripped my helmet off my head breaking the strap and a women said to me "Kortney...just relax and breath and get those shoes on..." thank you to whomever that was. After the longest T2 in history - 1:49 to be exact I made my way onto the run. I wanted to conserve myself since I always go out hard and then feel like I die at the end so that is what I did but every race is different and what I should have done was ran harder to pass Janet and see if she could hang with me because I couldn't catch her at the end - I had a better run split than her but spent too much time in T2 and she beat me by 28 seconds. I ended up third overall and congrats to Claire Boostma who won. She had a great race - she is now a part of the Gear West Devlopment Team and it is great to have her as a part of the team!