Lake to Lake Triathlon

Unlike my normally loooooooooooooong race reports I'll keep this one short.... I PROMISE!!!

I decided to do this race only about a week before after some encouragement from local sponsors and some friends who raved about the event.

I had contemplated driving up the night before (45 min haul) and sleeping in the back of the subie while at the race site. When my evening prior race preps took a bit too long I just cashed in at home and figured the extra time awake in the morning prior to the gun would be a good thing.

Up at 4:01am because I could not bear to wake up with a "3" on the clock face. I felt pretty good and got out the door and up to the race site quickly. Grabbed my packet, didn't warm up enough, tried to get moved into the first wave (I was in the third) and then settled for 10 minutes of spinning my wheels in the water.

Okay... game time.

The cannon (yes cannon) goes off and we bolt. After about 20 seconds I look back to see someone still trying to hold on... when will people learn. *shakes head* I kicked it up one more notch and the vendetta and I were clear. I had a pretty difficult time navigating my way through the two earlier fields and this made for some tight neck and back muscles come Sunday. The back stretch was nice as it was a straight shot to two brigh orange twin buoys marking the swim exit. As soon as I had them in sight I locked on and went in.

T1 is a bit long and while running along the grass in my bloated wetty Billy said to strip and carry it. Doing this really helped and I sped on through T1 with ease. Out on the bike I could tell that I wasn't warmed up. I didn't feel bad, but I also didn't really feel like I was firing on all cyclinders. Just didn't have that snap that I would've liked. After some rolling thru town and a small descent we started on what felt like an MC Escher bike course. It felt like allllll the way to mile 13 was uphill... I knew we were going to get a little downhill (very brief but SUPER fast) and then have a loooong slow grind back to Loveland. Hunh? Seriously... I thought I was on a bike course version of this.

Up and over Horsetooth we flew back down to Ft. Fun and then down off the mesa and the long grind back up to Loveland. It wasn't until after the downhill that I felt my legs wake up. Now I was ready (oops... only 2/3rds of the way thru the bike!). I started hitting the gas and arrived back at T2 feeling good. Hoped off and flew through T2. Upon exit Billy gave me some splits to the leaders (I had my 8 minute buffer tho) and I was on!

Finally got the cadence pacer up and running a half mile in and HOT DAMN if I didn't feel soooooooo fluid. My stride felt effortless and soft. My foot strikes were being entirely absorbed and recoiled and springing me forward with each step with the use of my calves and feet. No longer was i planting with the heel first and sending all that shock into my hip. I felt like a runner. High cadence, high cadence, high cadence. HOT DAMN this felt good!!!

I had made the decision to run sans watch and once at the out and back it looked like Justin and Craig were miles ahead of me. Next was Curt looking strong. I knew that they were all well within 8 minutes but by how much I was not sure... didn't even have the faintest clue. I kept hammering it out to the beat of the cadence beeper on the way back despite my quickly tiring. I worked to keep my stride length long and just get to the line. I was starting to falter but kept pushing. With a quarter mile to go as I was rounding the last little lake (puddle) between me and the finish line I heard Billy start SCREAMING about the time gap. At this point I lost all sense of personal awareness, turned off the beeper and just kicked it into the highest gear possible that I had left. It was probably slow but if felt like I was killing it.

Crossed the line and was quickly informed that I had secured the victory albeit 8 minutes behind. I thanked Billy for getting me home and then met up with Justin Hurd, Craig and Craig (the top 4) for an easy 10-15 minute cool down. Man that felt good. Had a great time meeting Justin and hanging out with my athletes and enjoying the post race breakfast (that alone is worth the race!).

More on the weekend from a few posts ago here... http://trimarkyv.blogspot.com/2008/06/awesome-weekend.html