Thanks for the tips so far ladies!
OTG, definitely will do that! There is a good tri club here where I live and they have started mini-tri's each Wednesday after work. Soon they will start the open swim portion in the lake. I know the first time is going to be a doozie .
There is just a period about 100 meters in where I feel really rough with my muscles and breathing but it calms down at about 250. It's good to know that some tri's have warm-up periods!