I Won a Race This Morning!

I just got up from my comfortable chair where I was lounging in front of the TV and came down to my computer to post the results of the race this morning. First, of course, I checked my email as the results page was loading. It seems I don't even need to blog about WINNING the Florida's Great Escape this morning because my inbox was already full of congratulations emails!
Where did you people see results for this obscure little triathlon on a FREEZING morning in March!?!? I mean, it's not like they will be posted on the home page of USAT, ITU, or Triathlete...so I feel like I was late to make my own announcement!
Oh well, I'll just make the announcement again, in case you didn't catch it the first time in my previous paragraph: I won the race this morning!! Yea, my first 'win' as a professional triathlete...even though it wasn't technically a 'pro' race, but there was prize money and other competitors with pro cards.
Actually, there were quite a few other pros out this morning because Clermont is such a popular place to train during the winter. There was a large contingent of Canadian athletes training down the road from Lake Louisa at the Vacation Villages. A couple Ironman and 70.3 athletes, etc.
I think another reason might be that this is one of the first triathlon races of the year in the continental United States...not too many other places would be crazy enough to mark March 9th on their calendars. The 324 people that finished the race this morning were pretty crazy (myself being one of them) because we woke up to temperatures in the 40s, strong wind from the north, and 57 degree water in the lake! Yes, that is not a typo..57 degrees. Tom Ziebart (the race director) emailed me that the water was a pleasant 65 degrees on Tuesday and I had my fingers crossed that it might warm up to 'non-wetsuit-legal' temperatures (obviously, a snowball's chance in...:)
Just getting out of the house and into the car at 5:30am was a brave action...let alone having to: strip down to a race suit, pull on a wetsuit, dive into the water, swim for 12 minutes, take off the wetsuit, pull on a cycling vest, ride 17 miles soaking wet, not feel my fingers to shift on the bike, not feel my feet to put my shoes on, running 3 miles on frozen nubs, etc. The bonus of the day was winning (obvious) and running a strong 5K off-road, sub-18 minutes.
Now I'm attempting to recover from the early morning (by the way, that was a 4:30am wake-up for every part of my body except the watch on my wrist which read "5:30am"), a hard physical effort (the race, duh), a very sore foot (still hurts but doesn't affect my racing:), and the huge pizza dinner that I just consumed (mushroom, sweet pepper, and pineapple if you were interested...or hungry)!