I'll Never Forget T2 at the Morton Plant Triathlon

The Morton Plant Triathlon was great fun. I say that now.
At 1:30 a.m. on race morning, however, when I STILL wasn't asleep, I was not in particularly good spirits. Next thing I knew, my alarm rang. It was 4:30. So, with a whopping three hours of sleep, I climbed out of bed and proceeded to convince myself that many, many people find it difficult, if not impossible, to sleep the night before a big race, whether it be a triathlon, marathon, or a first 5k. I told myself that the 1/3mi swim, 13mi bike, and 5k run would take a whole hour less than a half marathon. I hoped to finish in about 1 1/2 hrs. Then an hour later I could be back home and crawling into bed.
Besides the lack of sleep, everything went well Sunday morning until I entered the transition area after the bike segment for T2, but I'll get to that later.
First snafu, accident on the Causeway. I just followed the other cars up and over the island, an easier move for people with an SUV, but my TSX managed it okay.
I arrived at the race site at 5:50 to discover that parking at Sand Key Park, the race site, was already full, and I would have to park down the street. No problem. I had scouted out a backup parking spot the day before. The only hitch was getting all of that gear and my bike to transition. Mental note: purchase one of those big, nice, triathlon backpacks with the padded straps.
Five minutes later I was marked, no problem, but then there was a long, inefficient line to pick up chips. I had wondered the night before why I hadn't received a chip at check-in. Anyway, with everyone standing in line WITH their bikes, it was quite a knot at the chip table. That said, everyone was patient, and we did all get out chips in time.
With my bike racked and gear spread out, I carefully counted the racks in order to make it easy to locate my bike in T1 and return it in T2. Someone had even tied a balloon to the fence nearby, so I thought finding my stuff would be a cinch. HA!
Everything went pretty well until T2. I managed to get into kind of a bottleneck at the beginning of the swim, but then got into a reasonable rhythm. Coming out of the water, I dropped my goggles when I took off my cap, no big deal. T1 went well.
No problems on the bike, except my quads, once again seemed to take five miles to warmup.  My new bike was sweeeeeeet though. Got a Trek Equinox, 2006, on Craigslist for $750. I love it. Big improvement over borrowing my husband's 'too big' road bike like I did for the Madeira Beach Tri.
Anyway, the only major problem happened when I entered the transition area after the bike. I somehow got disoriented and thought I had entered the area from the same end through which I had left it. Yeah, ugh! I don't know how I did that. I counted my 7 rows, but the numbers were wrong on the racks. They weren't even close. I frantically ran in the other direction, but, although that should have been right, I was still confused and turned around again, and ran back to the wrong end again. Then, finally, I realized what I had done and located the right spot. The result was a five minute transition that would have been about two minutes. Rookie mistake. I won't do that again. From now on, my triathlon preparation will include a careful study of the entry and exit of transition for T1 and T2.
Somehow, miraculously, I still got third in my age group with a time of 1:31. So, I was happy, and I did have a nice nap.
Next up, the Top Gun Triathlon on August 1st, at Ft. Desoto Park. The last time I did a triathlon at Ft. Desoto was 23 years ago.