Soma Triathlon

I always swore up and down that I'd never become one of those people.  You know, the ones who spam up the internets with a bazillion pictures of their kid(s). But oh well, screw it... this little dude is too cute to not share.  He must get that from his mom...

Lil' Mikey also loves turtles.

I debated hanging up the Lycra for the season back in September after Best of the US.  Going out on top and all... but that lasted all of a day or two before I found myself spending a good deal of my free time searching for a mid-October half iron race to jump into.  I eventually settled on the weekend of 10/22-10/23, which narrowed my choices down to 70.3 Austin and the Soma Half, in Tempe, AZ.  Soma won out on the basis of logistics.  Fights were way cheaper and it would be much easier to pull off in a 3-day weekend.  Doing Austin on that timeframe would've required flying on Delta, and I'll see them and their $175 each way bike fee in hell.

So... on Saturday morning I packed up the trusty Orbea and made my way to the airport for my flight to Phoenix.

Pipe insulation and zip ties... that's how the cool kids pack their bikes.

I got my favorite seat on the plane (exit row window), a rental car so new it didn't even have a license plate, and the hotel in Tempe let me check in right away when I showed up at 11AM.  To top it all off, when I made it to packet pickup later in the afternoon I was given bib #612... totally appropriate as I'm pretty sure I was the only Minnesota resident in the race.  Everything's comin' up Matt!

The Pre-Race Jams

Progression Through Unlearning by Snapcase.  I'm not even sure how I can adequately describe the awesomeness of this album.  It was released in 1997 (damn I'm getting old) and I'll bet I haven't gone a month since then without listening to it.  And every single time I crank it up it still puts a giant shit-eating grin on my face.  The best hardcore record of all time and it's not even close.

The Race

If you can say one thing about Red Rock Co. (the race organizers), it's that when they publish a schedule they stick to it.  The pro wave went off at 6:30 on the dot and the 34 and under men were told to immediately enter the water for the scheduled 6:32 start.  The degree of difficulty there is that it was an in-water start a solid 100+ meters or so out from where we entered.  As I was about halfway down the stairs leading to the scuzzy green water of Tempe Town Lake I heard the announcer say we had 90 seconds to get to the line.  Holy crap! I'm actually gonna have to hustle a little bit not to miss the start.  The end result is that I made it to the start line at nearly the precise moment the horn blew.

The rest of the swim was pretty uneventful.  The field got strung out extremely quickly, which on one hand was nice because there was little to no contact, but on the other hand sucked because I couldn't find a decent pair of feet to follow and ended up breaking my own water the whole way.  According to the internet, we were supposed to have the sun directly in our eyes on the first leg of the swim making it next to impossible to sight, but the sun didn't crest the surrounding hills until we were very close to the 1st turn buoy, so it wasn't much of an issue.  My watch said 29-flat (official split is 29:32, but the timing mat was at the entrance to transition, not the actual swim exit) when I peeled my wetsuit off on the run up to transition.  A little slower than I was hoping, but swim times seemed fairly slow across the board so I'm reasonably happy with it.

I got through transition without incident and headed out on this adventure...

Just in case you didn't bring your abacus... that's 4 tight u-turns and a whole bunch of other sketchy corners, repeated 3 times.  Not that I'm complaining, it was actually a ton of fun.  During every other half-iron race I've done, I've been bored out of my skull on the bike.  Not this one.  This course commands your full attention if you want to ride fast and still keep it rubber side down.

I figured going in that since there would be 1000+ people on a 3-loop course that it would be wall to wall bikes the entire time.  It was actually pretty lonely the first lap.  I picked off a few of the faster swimming guys from my wave within the first handful of km's (as an aside... I switched my bike computer over to metric a few weeks ago, so it's straight kilometers from here on out), and started working my way up into the pro field.  I wasn't quite sure how to handle that since the pros are subject to slightly different drafting rules and I didn't want to pull a boneheaded move and earn myself or anyone else a cheap penalty.  Do the pros have to stagger off of me when I'm in front?  Would the refs not recognize that I'm in the AG race and penalize me for not following the pro position rules?  No idea on either count.  I just did my best to get way over to the right when I wasn't passing and trusted everyone else to sort it out correctly.  Luckily it was a non-issue and everyone got along just fine. 

Immediately upon passing transition and starting the second lap I was greeted with the endless sea of traffic in front of me that I was expecting from the beginning.  Despite all the traffic my second lap ended up over a minute faster than my first.  The biggest difference was the way I approached the turns.  I took the corners on the first lap very conservatively while on the 2nd and 3rd I was able to carry a quite a bit more speed through as I'd seen it all before.

About halfway through the 2nd loop I passed pro Matthew Russell, who eventually won the race.  He ended up passing me back about a minute later and we continued to battle for the remaining 40K or so of the bike, with the lead changing between us a half dozen or so times.

I hit the entrance to T2 with 2:42:xx showing on my watch, for a 2:10:something bike split.  That was easily the best ride I've ever put together in a long course race.  I beat my own pre-race expectations by a solid 3-4 minutes, outsplit the entire pro field and threw down for 40K with a guy who just went 8:43 (23rd overall) in Kona.  Not much to complain about there!

T2 was a little slow because I opted to put on some socks, but I made it out a handful of seconds behind Russell, who immediately shot off like a rocket on the way to his race-winning 1:17 run.  I was starting to feel the effects of the heat and sun right away and set out at what I thought was a fairly conservative pace, but I hit the first mile marker in 5:46 anyway.  I would pay pretty dearly for that 1st mile enthusiasm later in the run (miles 10-12 were all a super-gross 7:00+).  Proper pacing at this distance is some sort of level 80 wizard magic that I simply don't understand.

Somewhere around mile 9.5 I was passed by the eventual amateur winner, Dan Brienza.  He flew past me like I wasn't even moving.  I was strictly in survival mode by that point so I had nothing in response.  I couldn't do much beyond plodding along at my own pace the rest of the way to the finish.  I finally made it across the line in 4:07:27 and immediately kicked off the end-of-season celebration by spending the next few minutes leaning over a fence puking my guts out.  That makes me 3 for 3 in puking at the finish line of long course races this year.  Party hard!

So with that, the off season officially begins.  My previous best half was a 4:11 at Chisago (and that's more like a 4:14 since the run is ~.4mi short), so 4:07 is a huge personal best at this distance.  And while its great to go out with a massive PR and all, there's still plenty of room for improvement, especially on the swim and the run.  So if you need to get a hold of me this winter, I'll be in the pool or on the trails!

Best of the US!

Mop Basted... No Rubs!

Alright, first things first.  Here's an obligatory cute baby pic, taken at his very first big league ball game:

Awwwwww...

I can't stress enough how great he's been letting us sleep through the night and how awesome my wife is in allowing me to disappear for an entire weekend to prance around in Lycra on the other side of the country.  With the important stuff out of the way, here's a long-winded recap of some race I just did.

I woke up well before sunrise on Friday and headed off to the airport.  Patrick Parish was also racing and we'd be sharing a hotel and rental car to keep costs down.  We met at the gate and made it down to Mobile without incident.

Once there we managed to Tetris two bike bags plus the rest of our luggage into a standard size rental car and hit the road for Gulf Shores, Alabama.  Somewhere along the way we caught sight of a little hole in the wall barbecue joint called Porky's.  I immediately slammed on the brakes and parked the car.

We're not in Minnesota anymore, are we?

I'm still not entirely sure what "Mop basted, no rubs!" actually means, but it made for a damn tasty pulled pork sandwich.  With our southern barbecue fix out of the way we got back on the road and made it the rest of the way to Gulf Shores, home of such classy establishments as the Purple Octopus T-Shirt Factory and Souvenir City.

The shark's mouth is the front door.  Freakin awesome!

But seriously, Gulf Shores is a pretty cool little beach town, and it looks like it would be a great place for a family vacation, but we were here on "business", so we got right down to it, checked into the hotel, built the bikes up and went for a ride.

Later in the afternoon we hit the BOUS packet pickup, where we were greeted with a free buffet of sliders, chicken sandwiches, pasta salad and a bunch of other good stuff.  Trudy really rolls out the red carpet for the BOUS racers.  Very cool.

As I was stepping up to the bar to order a Coke to wash down my sliders, a couple random drinkers looked over at me and said, "Hey Payne, we've got you to win tomorrow!"  What the deuce?!?  How do these randoms know my name?  Then I realized that we were all wearing nametags.  Thanks for the vote of confidence, random afternoon drinkers!


Later that night Patrick and I were loafing around the hotel room flipping through the channels when Billy Madison came on.  Patrick told me if he passed me at any point during the race he planned on yelling "O'Doyle Rules!"  Hmmmm... challenge accepted.


The Race

Our hotel room was only a mile from the race site, so we were able to ride our bikes down to the transition area.  As soon as we arrived we heard the news -- the water temperature had been measured at 74 degrees, so the swim would be wetsuit legal.  This was a shocker since we were told in the pre-race briefing on Friday that the water was 86 degrees.  Apparently the ocean current and a change in wind direction can swing the water temp 12 degrees overnight.  Wild.

Patrick and I actually debated the night before whether or not we should bring our wetsuits down to the race site or just leave them in the room.  We eventually decided on bringing them along on the grounds that we had already hauled them the first 1500 miles, so we may as well haul them the last 1.  It turned out to be the correct choice.

The swim course was a simple point to point layout along the coast.  Start on the beach, swim ~150m out, turn and parallel the shore for ~1200m, then turn back in.  That 1200m stretch looked loooong during the walk down to the start.  Once there I wrangled myself into my wetsuit and spent most of my warmup time figuring out the fastest way to navigate through the shore break out into the relatively smooth waters of the Gulf.

Soon enough we were lined up at the start and sent off.  My practice entrances must have paid off, because I got out into the open water in the lead and I think was 2nd or 3rd around the 1st turn buoy.  However, it wasn't too long before I found myself in my traditional spot -- by myself in no man's land behind the main chase pack.  Since I was on my own, nothing real interesting happened during the rest of the swim.  As I was running up the beach I took a glance at my watch and saw 20:xx, which was a giant confidence boost as I really haven't been swimming all that well lately.  I've put in a ton of pool time since laying a 23 minute turd in the waters of Lake Champlain at AG Nationals a few weeks ago, so it's great to see that it apparently paid off.

T1 was the closest thing to a mistake I had in this race.  My wetsuit got stuck on my timing chip and it took several tries to finally get it off.  I thought I wasted a good 10 seconds at my rack because of that, but looking at the results my T1 time is right in line with everybody else's, so it couldn't have been as bad as it felt at the time.

Once out on the bike I could see the leaders stretched out in front of me and set out to reel them in.  I caught up to Alex Solomon and Ross Hartley relatively quickly, somewhere around mile 4 or so.  I passed James Haycraft at about mile 7 on the course's only "hill", which is actually a bridge over a canal.  At the first turnaround I was in 3rd, about 20 seconds back of Ben Lee, who was maybe 10 seconds or behind Colin Riley.  I saw that I had about a minute on Patrick, which was encouraging, but I'd need at least another minute heading into the run if I was going to avoid the "O'Doyle Rules!" treatment.

We had a decent head/cross wind on the way out to the first turnaround and it looked like I was closing in on Ben and Colin, but once we were sailing back on the tailwind it looked like I was no longer gaining on them and possibly even falling back a bit.  At about mile 15 the course turns off of the beach road and heads inland for a quick 3-mile out and back.  Right after making the turn onto that spur, Ben caught Colin and they both appeared to pick up their pace a little bit as they battled back and forth.  Because of that the gap between me and them started to grow noticeably.  At the second turnaround I was 30 seconds back of the two leaders, and with only 5 or so miles of riding left I had to accept the fact that I wasn't catching them on the bike.  The good news was that it looked like I had my 2 minutes on Patrick.  It was at this point that I first allowed myself to think that maybe O'Doyle didn't rule on this particular day after all.

T2 went without incident and it was out onto the run course.  Ben and Colin were running shoulder to shoulder about 30 seconds in front of me.  I set out at what I determined to be an optimistic but not suicidal pace and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was steadily closing the gap.  I caught them at about mile 2 and surged a little to try to make the pass stick.  I could hear the footsteps of one of them trying to go with me, but those gradually faded and I made it to the turnaround with a 15 or so second advantage.

After the turn I saw that Patrick had worked his way up to 4th and was clearly running faster than anyone else in the field, myself included.  I was keeping a pretty close eye on my watch as we approached and I figured that I had almost exactly one minute on him.  It was going to be extremely close, but holding him off was not out of the question.  This was the first time during the race that I seriously entertained the thought that I might win the thing.  Realizing that I was leading the race and that there was a reasonable chance I could actually hold that lead was a serious shot in the arm and really helped me hold my pace right at the time when things traditionally start to really suck.

I didn't allow myself to look back until the final turn off of the road into the finish chute, about 200m or so from the finish line.  Patrick was right there no more than 100m back and he was gaining fast, so I kicked it in as hard as I could manage.  I took one last look back right before the line, saw that I was indeed going to win and broke the tape with a 12 second advantage.

I'm not normally one for finish line celebrations, but its also not every day I win a race against this level of competition, so I grabbed the finish line banner and hoisted that thing as far above my head as I could reach.

FFFFFFYEAH!

So what do you do with the rest of your day in Gulf Shores after the race is over?  You go watch some damn dolphins jump around, that's what.

Trudy had chartered a boat to take all of the BOUS racers and their families on a dolphin watching cruise.  How cool is that?  The dolphins didn't disappoint either, they seemed to know the routine and swam right up to the boat, surfing on the wake and jumping out of the water.  They looked like they were enjoying themselves even more than we were.

To say I'm happy with how this race turned out would be a massive understatement.  Not only for the obvious reason that I won, but also that I finally managed to bring my best stuff on the swim, bike and run all on the same day.  I really don't feel like I had done that yet this season.  Ultimately finish placing has just as much to do with who shows up as it does with anything I have direct control over.  The races I'm really proud of are the ones where I raced smart, raced hard and finished feeling like I left it all out on the course.  That I couldn't have possibly squeezed another second out of myself given my fitness on that day.  I can say with certainty that the 2011 Best of the U.S. Championship was one of those races for me.

And beyond that the BOUS organization is simply top notch.  For anyone that qualifies for this race in the future and is on the fence as to whether or not to go, give it a shot, you won't be disappointed!

Tristar 111

Damn... I'm seriously tardy on this business.  That's what being a working stiff with a baby at home will do to a guy I guess.  I've actually raced 3 times since my last update:  Turtleman Duathlon, USAT AG Nationals and the brand new Tristar Minnesota race.  I'm gonna start with the Tristar, since that was only a couple days ago and is still relatively fresh in my mind.

The Pre-Race Jams


So how's the new In Flames album Sounds of a Playground Fading?  Silly question dumbass... it rules.  Just like every In Flames album.

In Flames we trust.  Still.

The Race

So for anyone not familiar with the Tristar series, the race consists of a 1K swim, 100K bike and 10K run.  In non-metric terms -- a swim that's little more than a warm-up, serious business on the bike, then a run that's long enough to matter but not so long that it kicks the crap out of you for several days afterward.  In other words, a race that's pretty much tailor made for my strengths.  Sweet.

Waking up and getting ready to leave the house on race morning was weird.  We were required to check in our bikes as well as all of the gear we'd need during T1 and T2 the night before, so my carefully rehearsed packing routine was shot to hell.  I ended up leaving the house with nothing but a plastic bag containing my wetsuit, swim cap, goggles and timing chip.  The entire way there I had this nagging feeling that I was forgetting something important, but once I got to the race site and looked inside my various transition bags I realized it was all there and relaxed a little.

A couple minutes after I arrived I heard the announcement that the water temp was 77F, meaning that the age groupers could wear wetsuits but the pros could not.  On one hand I was glad because I swim like a turd, but on the other hand, it's not every day that I get to do a race with a legit pro field, and it would be kind of cool to see where I stack up against those guys head to head on a level playing field.  I mean, I know I'm going to get my shit handed to me by guys like Macca and Maik Twelsiek, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be DFL against the entire pro start list either.  At any rate I'd sure as hell make anyone who was going to beat me work for it.  Oh well, whether or not I could've beat some of the pros will have to remain unresolved, because I'm not allowed in their wave and I'm sure as hell not spotting the minute or so I'd lose by going suitless to guys like Alex Hooke and Josh Riff, so on with the suit and into the lineup for the 2nd wave it was.

Because the field was so small, the swim start was probably the least violent of any non-time trial start swim I've ever done.  I jumped on Alex's feet for the first minute or so and was totally busting ass to stay there when I had a rare moment of clarity.  I could either continue busting my ass to try and hold his draft, probably lose him somewhere along the line anyway, then come out of the water totally shelled with 3+ hours of racing still ahead.  Or I could let him go, swim on my own at about 80% effort or so, lose maybe 60-90 seconds, but hit the bike course fresh.  I chose the latter and hit the beach a touch over 15 minutes, which was slower than I was hoping for, but feeling good and ready to hammer it out on the long bike.

T1 was just comically bad.  First I had trouble locating my bag on the rack, then I spent 15-20 seconds standing there scratching my ass looking for my bike.  I'm so accustomed to picking out my bright yellow transition mat when running down the bike rack that I was utterly lost without it.  Instead I'm standing there looking up and down the rack thinking it's the black one with the black wheels, why is it so hard to find!?!  News flash genius... they're pretty much all black with black wheels.  Eventually a volunteer pointed me in the right direction, I found my bike and I was off.

After making the turn out of the park and getting strapped in I saw Alex a good bit up the road ahead of me.  I was hoping I could ride fast enough to catch him by the end of the first loop.  I was also hoping that doing so would keep Josh behind me (I knew I got out of the water in front of him but I had no idea by how much).

By mile 5 or so I had almost caught up to Alex, which was surprising.  I was expecting a much longer chase.  I heard after the race that one of his brakes was rubbing for most of the first loop.  Bummer.

I was surprised as hell when right about the time I caught Alex I looked over to my left and saw Josh pulling around for the pass.  I thought I had way more time on him coming out of the water.  And no sooner had he completed the pass then I hear another bike approaching, look over and see Sean Cooley going by.  Damn.  I was not expecting that much company on the bike.

Of course, I'm not going to take getting passed by two guys lying down, so after dropping back and collecting myself I kicked it up a notch and went for the re-pass.  I rode pretty hard for a couple minutes hoping to put some sort of gap on them, but the second I let off the gas they went right on by again.  It wasn't just Josh leading the charge either.  Sean was riding aggressively as hell and looked perfectly comfortable mixing it up with me and Josh.  It seems like Sean's getting stronger every race and it won't surprise me a bit if he's a serious contender in the big local races next season.

That was basically the pattern for the next 20 miles or so.  I'd get to the front, ride unsustainably hard for a while, then the second I settled back into a more distance-appropriate pace I'd find myself sitting third-wheel again.  The whole time this was going on I was thinking about the Chisago half last year, when Josh and I came into T2 together and he proceeded to absolutely murder me on the run.  Granted, this was going to be a 10K run instead of a half marathon, so I think that tilts it a little toward my favor, but I still figured I needed to come into T2 with a minute-plus lead, so I was going to keep the hammer down until somebody broke.

At one point Josh rode up along side me and said something along the lines of, "You remember what race we're in, right?"  I'm sure I grunted something unintelligible as a reply, but I was thinking: yes, I'm doing the I-don't-want-to-end-up-in-a-foot-race-with-you-so-I'm-going-to-ride-away-from-you-or-die-trying distance.

Somewhere around mile 25 or so the elastic finally snapped and I pulled away.  It was a blast battling it out with those guys, but it was nerve-wracking at the same time.  All in all I was glad to be off on my own.

The rest of the bike was pretty boring.  The only other Tristar racers I saw for the remainder of the ride were Macca, who was soft-pedaling back toward transition after dropping out for some sort of mechanical issue, and pro Chris Boudreaux, who I passed while he was on the side of the road apparently serving a drafting standdown somewhere around mile 55.  My legs were feeling pretty ragged by now from all the action on the first loop and my pace was slowing considerably.  Luckily the ride was coming to an end and there was only a 10k run between me and the finish line.

T2 went considerably better than T1 and I got out onto the run course without incident.  The first thing I noticed on the run was that my legs were absolutely gone.  It felt like my heart rate was under control and I was barely breathing hard, but my legs were just screaming for mercy.  I suppose that makes sense given that I'd just completed the longest bike race of my life.  The only thing I could do now was set off at the fastest pace I could manage and hope for the best.  I was shocked after the race when I saw my run split was 37:33.  I would've bet my bankroll during the run that I was on my way to a 40+ split.  It's always good to be pleasantly surprised by a split like that.  Usually it works the other way around.

When I hit the line I was announced as the first amateur finisher, but it turned out there was another racer who actually crossed the line in front of me, 42 year old Jeff Fleig from LaCrosse.  It turns out he made a wrong turn somewhere out on the bike course and accidentally cut some of the distance.  He reported himself to the officials and ended up taking a DQ.  A tip of the cap to Mr. Fleig for being a stand up guy.   Honesty is refreshing in this day and age.

I capped off the day by recording this interview with Nick from TriJuice (a very cool website BTW) in which I twitch around like a nervous crackhead and accidentally refer to Sean Cooley as his brother Jake.  Sorry guys.  I'm normally not that big of a spaz.  I think.  Hopefully.

Next up is a long weekend of rest and relaxation followed by the Best of the US Championship on September 10th.

Waseca Tri

I've wanted to race the Waseca 1/3-Iron since it's inception, but have never been able to work it into my schedule.  June and July are usually so race-heavy that I need a bit of a mid-season break just for self-preservation.  That break typically falls right around the last week of July/first week of August.  This year, however, my mid-season hiatus was pushed back to early July due to the birth of my son, so instead of being all worn out and dead feeling, I've been chomping at the bit waiting to get out and race.  So late last week I decided I'd finally make the trek down to Waseca and try my hand at the somewhat bizarre 1/3-Iron distance

The Pre-Race Jams

A 7:30AM race start, ~90 minute drive, and the desire to get there a bit earlier than usual because I hadn't pre-registered adds up to a pretty damn early wake up call.  For some reason I had even more trouble waking up on Sunday than usual.  I was stumbling around my house like I was drunk and it seemed like loading the car took twice as long as usual.

I knew I would need some weapons-grade noise to jar myself awake, so I cranked up Speaker of the Dead by Emmure.  This is excessively downtuned, brutally heavy deathcore with all the subtlety and finesse of a sledgehammer to the side of the head.  Just what the doctor ordered.

The Race

Looking at the participant list in the days leading up to the race, I was confident I'd be toeing the line as the prohibitive favorite to win.  However, since this race allows morning-of registration, you really don't know who will be showing up.  This point was driven home on race morning when I saw Kevin O'Connor standing on the starting line.  Sometimes you show up for a workout and a race breaks out.  Game on.

The race started out with a 1 mile wetsuit-legal swim in Clear Lake. Degree of difficulty: Clear Lake is not clear (the visibility is actually down in the 6-7" range) and the water felt way too warm to be wetsuit legal. I'm not sure if an official water temp measurement was taken, and if it was I never heard it, but it felt every bit as warm as the Mississippi did last week at Twin Cities, and the water temp there was 82º.

The swim start was surprisingly rough given the relatively small size of the field.  I lined up next to Kevin hoping to stay on his feet the whole way, but I lost him in the scrum during the first 100m.  I took a couple good kicks to the jaw, swam over a couple guys, and had a few guys swim over me within the first couple minutes.  Good times.  

When things finally sorted out, there was one guy off the front maybe 10 seconds or so, with me and two others (based on the results, I'm guessing John Shelp and one of the relay swimmers) chasing.  I decided to do the smart thing and settled into the draft behind the other two guys.  I stayed there for another 400m or so, but I kept swimming up the other guys' backs, and the guy out front kept pulling away, so I bid my little pack farewell and struck out on my own for the rest of the swim.  I suspected it was Kevin out front who I was chasing, but I couldn't be sure.  I don't think I gained much ground on him once I started swimming solo, but at least I didn't lose any more, so I think I made the right choice.

Heading up the beach into T2 was rough.  I was cooking in my wetsuit, my legs were wobbly and I felt a little dizzy.  I've never been so glad to finish a swim before in my life.  I saw that it was indeed Kevin who I was chasing as he was running out of transition with his bike when I arrived at my rack, so I tried to hustle through transition as fast as possible to keep him in sight.

The first couple miles of the bike were rough.  I was still in a daze from overheating on the swim and my legs felt terrible.  I took it pretty easy for the first few minutes and tried to rehydrate.  After downing about 20oz of fluids I started to come around and could start riding for real.  I quickly picked off a relay biker that had passed me within the first couple miles and caught up to Kevin around mile 4 or so.

I wasn't quite sure going in what the correct pacing strategy should be for this distance.  Is it more like a long Olympic or a short half-iron?  I chose to split the difference and pretend I was racing an Olympic during the bike and a half during the run.  This worked out pretty well as I built up a decent lead heading into T2 and the hot and humid conditions ensured that the run would be a death march regardless of how I paced the bike.

I also had the bright idea of lowering my front end by removing a spacer from underneath the stem as I was giving my bike the traditional pre-race tuneup on Saturday evening.  I hadn't changed a single thing about my bike setup since May 2010, I had no real reason to change anything since I had my best ride of the season at Twin Cities last weekend, and the collective wisdom of the triathlon universe says changing your bike position 12 hours before a race is a terrible idea.  Still, you never really know whether or not something will work until you try, so down the bars went.  The verdict... who knows?  I honestly couldn't even tell the difference.  For some guys, moving something on the bike a few millimeters one way or the other makes all the difference in the world.  I am apparently not one of those guys.

T2 was a little slow since I decided to put socks on for the run, but I made it through without incident and got out onto the run course.  I hit the first mile marker in 5:40 still feeling pretty decent, but the heat and humidity caught up with me in short order as my splits kept creeping upward every subsequent mile.  By the time I got onto the second loop I was hanging on for dear life at around 6:20 pace.  Thankfully I was able to hold that for the remainder of the race.  I had no idea how far back Kevin was, so I was actually running a little scared.

With around 2 miles left to go race director Mark Bongers rode up next to me on a mountain bike and told me I was about 5 minutes up.  After hearing that news I was ready to shut it down and jog the rest of the way, but then I took a look at my watch, crunched a few numbers and realized that if I could just hold pace I'd get in under the course record, so I pushed hard the rest of the way and hit the finish line at 2:37:29, lowering the course record by 56 seconds.

Thanks to Final Stretch for putting on a great race, all of the volunteers for helping us out, and to the people of Waseca for allowing a bunch of Lycra-clad goons to take over your park for a day!

Waseca Triathlon Results

Twin Cities Triathlon

+1

So it turns out I haven't updated this thing in a while.  I think I've got a reasonably decent excuse. This little dude...

Hello world!

was born on July 8th. His name is Michael Bradford Payne. He's been pretty cool thus far. His main interests are eating, sleeping and pooping, with the occasional bout of screaming whenever circumstances compel him to deviate from his preferred routine of eating, sleeping and pooping.

Since things at home are relatively under control I signed myself up for the Twin Cities Triathlon late last week. I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into this one.  My training volume has been down a bit, but what I have been doing has felt relatively strong, and I hadn't raced in 4 weeks, so if nothing else I was going in well rested. My only real goal was to put in a good effort, knock the cobwebs loose and get my mind right to put in some solid training over the next few weeks for AG Nationals and Best of the US.

The Pre-Race Jams


I'm really digging the latest Deftones record Diamond Eyes.  Well, most of it anyway.  Like the last few Deftones albums, ~70% of it is brilliant and the rest puts me to sleep.  But hey, that's what the fast forward button is for.

70% of the time, it works all the time.

The Race


This race has a 1.2mi point-to-point downstream swim in the Mississippi river.  Thanks to all the rain we've been getting lately, the current was ripping along at about 5 knots, and thanks to the heat wave the water was bathtub warm, so no wetsuits.

Since the "beach" we started at was all of about 5 feet wide, we were sent off one-by-one in a time trial format.  I lined up 3rd behind Devon Palmer and stomped my way in.  Then the epic shitshow that was my swim started.

I managed to make it all of about 10m before I felt my timing chip coming loose on my ankle, so I turned over on my back, found the chip (luckily they float) and attempted to re-fasten it. It turns out fastening a velcro strap around your ankle while trying to stay afloat in water that allows for zero visibility is really hard.  It doesn't get easier with practice either, as I found out when my chip came off two more times. My general attitude as this was happening is best summarized below with some totally pro MS-Paint work:

After the chip came off the 3rd time I finally got smart enough to just stuff the thing down the top of my suit. By that time the damage had been done. I was sitting in like 20-somethingth place, and given that I had a head start on all but two of those guys I was really losing ground.

With the chip situation squared away and my head back in the game I managed to swim through most of the pack that passed me during the chip drama. Since there was literally zero visibility there was a ton of contact. Sorry to anyone I may have swam over the top of. I generally try to not do that.

The swim exit looked like a TCMC group workout as I came out right behind Patrick Parish and Brendon O'Flanagan and right in front of Steve Sander.  In "real" time however I was behind all of those guys due to the order of the time trial start.  I wowed (read: confused the hell out of) the assembled spectators with a sweet ninja move where I pulled the chip out of my suit and bent down to swipe it over the mat without breaking stride and sprinted into transition.

T1 was slower than it should've been since I had to strap my chip back on, but it was only a couple extra seconds and I made it out right on the heels of Patrick and Brendon.

Right about the time I finished strapping into my shoes I arrived at the base of the infamous Ohio Street climb. I've done this climb quite a few times over the last couple years, but never on my tri bike, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  It ended up not being too big a deal and I got up pretty comfortably in the saddle with a couple gears to spare.  I passed about a half dozen people on the way up and closed a bit of the gap to Patrick.

Once it flattened out on top I caught up to David Holden and Nick Madrinich, both of whom are extremely fast swimmers.  That was a huge confidence boost.  If I'm catching the super-swimmers at mile 2 than I clearly didn't lose as much time in the water as I feared.  Gotta love that river current.

Once I got out onto Hwy. 13 there was only Patrick and a lead motorcycle in front of me.  This struck me as odd because I expected Devon to be out front (it turns out he was, just so far that I couldn't see him).  After a steep, but thankfully short, climb back out of the river valley on Lexington I caught up to Patrick and went for the pass.  I've raced Patrick a ton over the last few seasons and I knew that if I was going to make that pass stick I would have to ride extremely hard, so I shifted about 2 gears taller than I would normally ride and just mashed the pedals for the next several miles.

A few corners later I took a quick look behind me and didn't see Patrick (or anyone else), and the lead moto was the only thing in front of me.  At this point I thought I was leading the race since I've never heard of a lead moto for 2nd.  I kept pushing hard hoping to build up a good lead over Patrick since I knew he would put significant time into me on the run.  After a scary descent back into the river valley through narrow residential streets I arrived back at transition. Once I got to my rack in T2 I noticed Devon's bike was already there, so I guess I was in 2nd after all.

Running out of T2, the first thing I noticed was that my legs felt really, really heavy. Way worse than they have at the start of the run in any other race I've done this season. I suppose that makes sense given the overly enthusiastic bike pace. It also probably didn't help that the first mile of the run is all uphill. Pre-race all anyone wanted to talk about were the hills on the bike course. Those were nothing compared to the hills on the run course. On the bike you always have the option of coasting a downhill. There's no such thing on the run, where descending is every bit as punishing as ascending.

Once I made it up and over the bridge and back down to Shepard Rd. I finally caught sight of Devon, who looked to have a 2+ minute lead. I was gradually closing in on him and had the gap down to 90 seconds or so when Patrick came flying past me at about mile 2.5. I kept plugging away at my own pace and was sitting in 3rd about 1 minute back from Devon at the turnaround. I also had Illinois-based pro Ryan Guiliano about 90 seconds behind me, and he looked like he was closing fast.

By the time we got back up to the downtown side of the bridge, Devon still had maybe 20 seconds on me.  There's only about 3/4 of a mile left at this point, so I knew it would be tough, but I was still determined to try and catch him. I lengthened my stride on the downhill and pushed as hard as I could, closing the gap to ~10 seconds (my shins are still hating me for this as I write it ~36 hours later). Unfortunately for me, Devon knew I was coming and found a little extra in the last few hundred meters, so the 10 second gap held to the line. Since he started ahead of me the official gap in the results was 8 seconds.

I was awarded my 2nd ever oversized novelty check for my efforts! This was a nice surprise as I was unaware that there were cash prizes when I signed up. Completely unexpected money may be the best kind of money.

I have no idea who or what I was looking at when this was taken.

OHP puts on a hell of a race. The venue was amazing. The bike and run courses are difficult, but not ridiculously so. And swimming in the river is no big deal. In fact, just judging by the fact that I don't feel sick as hell today, I'll take the river over any of the metro area lakes. So if you find yourself on the fence for this on when planning your schedule for next summer, do it!

Twin Cities Triathlon Results

Lake Waconia Triathlon

So there I am cruising down Highway 5 on the way to the race, music cranking, enjoying my traditional in-car pre-race breakfast of champions (a banana and a can of Ensure chased with a 20oz of Coke), when I see what looked like a little painted turtle on the opposite shoulder.  Sadly, roadkill turtles are a somewhat familiar sight in Minnesota this time of year, but this one didn't look like it had been hit.  So I slammed on the brakes and pulled a really sketchy, most likely illegal U-turn and circled back to check on the little guy (more likely girl actually, as most of the turtles killed crossing roads are females traveling to/from nesting sites) with the intention of helping it cross the road safely.

Many of you who stumble upon this blog may not know of the depths of my turtle and tortoise nerdery.  Well... turtles and tortoises are my favorite animals ever.  I have a pet tortoise, I've planned vacations around turtle-related activities, and I regularly donate money to turtle related charities (the Sea Turtle Conservancy and the Turtle Hospital if you happen to have some money burning a hole in your pocket).  So it's my personal policy to always stop and make sure any live turtle I see on the road makes it to the other side.  Not doing so condemns the turtle in question to death for all intents and purposes.  The chances of a turtle making it safely across a road as busy as Hwy. 5 unassisted are pretty much zero.

Sadly, this particular turtle had indeed been hit and was already dead, so this story doesn't really go anywhere other than serving as platform for me to tell you to watch where the hell you're going when you're driving.  There's really no excuse for running over a turtle.  They're kinda slow... it's not like they'll jump out and surprise you.

Don't squish me bro!

With that out of the way...

Waconia is always a highlight of the season.  It serves as Minnesota's qualifier for the Best of the US Championship, so the field is always very competitive at the front and this year was no exception.  I finished 4th here last year and luckboxed my way into the BOUS race via rolldown when the 3 guys in front of me were unable to go.  I ended up finishing 3rd at the championship race, earning myself the somewhat dubious distinction of being the only guy in the history of the competition to place better in the national race than in his state's qualifier.  The crazy part about that is that I didn't race poorly at Waconia or out of my head well at BOUS.  In both races I did pretty much what I expected out of myself time-wise.  Dudes are just that fast around here.

This year my primary goal was to finish in the top 3 so I could qualify legit and not have to worry about the rolldown.  That would by no means be an easy mission, as you can pretty much set your clocks by Dan Hedgecock and Patrick Parish going 1-2 at this point.  The race for 3rd looked like it could be pretty epic though between me, Alex Hooke and Kevin O'Connor.  We've raced each other a ton over the last couple seasons and have proven to be fairly evenly matched.

The Pre-Race Jams


Even without the attempted turtle rescue detour, Waconia is a long damn way from Columbia Heights.  Good thing I pulled some solid tunes out of the vault for the journey.  Obsolete by Fear Factory is one of my favorite records of all time.  It's an industrial metal concept album that tells a story about a Teminator-esque future where the machines have taken over the world.  If you're saying, "Wow... that's the nerdiest thing I can imagine and sounds like concentrated female repellant," you'd be absolutely right.  But I'm old and married with a kid on the way so I can now say that I love this shit with no shame whatsoever.

Nerdrage!

The Race


Another race, another ridiculous problem.  This time, as I was zipping up the top half of my suit in transition getting ready to head down to the swim start, the stupid zipper popped open and jammed exactly like it did during the swim at Trinona a couple weeks ago.   I stood there and wrestled with it for a solid 15 minutes, but I couldn't get it put back together and the start time was rapidly approaching, so eventually I just gave up and resigned myself to doing another race looking like an absolute goofball.  Not a super great start to the day.


Since I wasted so much time with my suit, I didn't really get any sort of warmup.  I've never been a big believer in the power of the warmup anyway so I wasn't too concerned.  I lined up right next to Alex with the intention of trying to stay on his feet the whole way.  I stayed with him for maybe 1/3 of the swim, but then I lost him and was stuck swimming alone again.  Right after the first turn I got in with 5 or 6 others and we swam as a pack the rest of the way.  All in all a reasonably decent swim by my standards, but I'm starting to see a pattern where I swim like a champ for 300-400m then fall off the pace.  I'll have to add more race pace swim workouts so I can get more comfortable at that effort and hopefully hold it together a little longer.  If I could have stayed on Alex's feet I'd have gained ~30 seconds, which is a serious chunk of time in a race like this.

T1 was pretty meh.  I fumbled with my helmet strap for a few seconds and almost ran some girl over at the mount line, but didn't have any major F-ups.

One of the coolest things about Waconia is the banana yellow trike with the giant American flag on the back that serves as a lead vehicle on the bike course.  You can spot that thing from a couple miles away, so you always know exactly where you are relative to the race leader.  Once we got out of town and onto the open road I was pleasantly surprised to see the trike not more than 30 seconds or so up the road with only 5 bikes in front of me.  That meant that with a decent ride I could get to the front of the race by T2, and if I'm on the front at T2 I'm in pretty good shape for a podium spot.

Of course seeing the lead vehicle off in the distance and actually bridging the gap up there are two different things entirely.  I caught the first two guys within 3-4 miles and found myself in 4th behind Dan, Alex and Kevin.  At around mile 6 I caught Kevin and was sitting in 3rd about 20 seconds back from Dan, with Alex maybe 3-4 seconds up on him.  At around mile 10 we turned into the wind and it felt like someone filled my tires with cement.  Luckily I was still closing on the guys in front, so they must've been struggling with the wind a bit too.

I finally caught Dan around mile 16 or so.  There were a few rounds of back and forth passing as we bridged the gap up to Alex, and I came around and assumed the race lead at about mile 18.  I got to revel in the excitement of leading the race for all of about 15 seconds before Alex re-passed me, but hey, for that brief moment in time, I was winning.  Some days you've gotta celebrate the small victories.

Maybe 1/2 mile out from T2 Patrick came blasting by seemingly out of nowhere and Dan, not willing to give up an inch to Patrick, bombed down the hill into the park with him.  All 4 of us hit T2 together.  Patrick and Dan leading the way, then me, then Alex, all spaced less than a second apart.

I got through T2 without incident and hit the run course a couple strides behind Dan and Patrick.  I couldn't hear Alex's footsteps behind me, but I knew he should be close.  I drilled it out of T2 and managed to stick with Dan and Patrick for the first half mile or so.  I was fully aware that given their NCAA D-I run pedigrees I wasn't beating either of them to the line, but I can't be that close to those guys that late in the race and not even try.  This also had the nice side effect of putting a decent gap on Alex behind me, with the obvious not-so-nice side effect of me feeling like a cramping, puking pile of dog crap only 1/2 mile into the run.

Once the track stars had broken me off and started disappearing toward the horizon I settled into a more appropriate pace.  The run course at Waconia features near constant rolling hills.  Nothing super steep, thankfully, but just enough so that you never really feel like you can get into any sort of rhythm.  At the turnaround I saw that I had a solid 30 seconds on Alex, so I was still in pretty good shape to grab the final BOUS slot, but I really felt like I was on the verge of falling apart.  I must've looked back a dozen times on the return portion of the run, but thankfully nobody was ever there so I was able to cross the line in 3rd.

There's no prize money on offer at Waconia, but they have the next best thing... beer mugs!  Crashing out on the couch with a frosty cold one the afternoon after a race is one of life's greatest pleasures.  And it's even better when you can drink it right out of your trophy.

I don't always drink beer.  But when I do, I prefer whatever cheap swill is on sale.

So in review... pretty much par for the course:  swim was OK, not real good, but not embarrassingly bad, bike was decent, run was poorly paced (although that was a conscious decision on my part) but otherwise serviceable.  The end result... the ticket to BOUS is punched and my cupboard has one more beer mug in it.  I'll take it!

Lake Waconia Triathlon Results

Trinona

The second weekend in June is a tough one for Minnesota-based triathletes.  There are too many races to choose from.  Liberty, Manitou and Trinona on the same weekend?!?  Three competitive, professionally-run triathlons, from sprint to half-iron distance, all within a couple hours driving from each other, all at essentially the same time?  There might not be a single other location on earth where that happens.  The weather may suck balls here for 8 months of the year, but we make up for it by going hard during the other 4.

For the second season in a row I chose to race Trinona.  Its tough to believe that this race is only on it's third year. Race director Dave Schutz has ambitions to make Trinona one of the premiere events in the area, and he's doing a bang up job so far.  One of the places where this really shows is in the strength of the field.  This year there were three pros on hand: David Thompson, Patrick Davis and Nathan White.  On the amateur side we had me, Alex Hooke and Sam Janicki.  Looking at that list I'm thinking 4th would be my best case scenario, but really my primary goal was to beat my time from last year's race.  You can't control who else shows up, and given the choice I rather race my balls off against the best and lose than cruise to an easy win by default.

The Pre-Race Jams


Winona is just over the threshold of what I consider a reasonable morning-of drive, so I made the trip the day before.  Therefore the drive down was mostly spent listening to a Twins game.  I like my metal and all, but 3 straight hours of it on a sunny Saturday afternoon is a bit much even for me.

When you wake up before the sun on a race day however, you've gotta be prepared to go hard.  And you cant go much harder than 300 Percent Density by Candiria, so that's what I popped in for the short drive from the hotel to the race site.  This is some next level shit.  If you're into heavy music at all, even a teeny tiny little bit, and you haven't heard Candiria, you need to rectify that situation immediately.

Level up!

The Race


I swam the entire race solo last year, so this year I was really determined to fight for a good position at the start, go out super hard and get on some fast feet.  I nailed the first two items on that list with a pretty epic fail on the third.  About a hundred yards in I found myself on the left side of Janicki with a few more guys right in front of us.  As it turns out he only breathes to the right and tends to veer left.  I only breathe left and tend to veer right, so we spent the next couple minutes swimming into each other every couple strokes.

Eventually I had the brilliant idea that dropping back behind Sam and having him tow me around the course would be a better idea than a 1.5K floating fistfight. And it was, for the 10 seconds or so I lasted back there.  Before I knew it, Sam had a good 10 yards on me and I was relegated to no man's land again.  I have no idea how I could swim directly next to him for a decent length of time yet completely fail to hold his draft.  Maybe the contact slowed him down more than me.  Or maybe I started running out of gas at the precise time I tried to slip in behind him.  The rest of the swim was a decent solo effort and I got out right around 20-flat.  Not my worst, but damn it would've been awesome to stay in that draft and pick up some free time.

It just wouldn't be a race if something weird didn't happen, and this time around it was a wardrobe malfunction.  As I was running through T1 pulling my wetsuit off, I noticed that the zipper of my one-piece trisuit had come undone.  No problem, I'll just zip that back up and get on my way.  But wait, the zipper already is up.  WTF?!?!  The zipper was jammed at the top and busted open at the bottom.  I have no idea how that's even possible, but it was jammed solid and wasn't going to move.  The net result was that I hopped on the bike with what amounted to a giant hole in the front of my suit, putting my pasty white 1-pack of a stomach out there for all to see.  I realize I'm probably doing a piss-poor job of describing this and I don't have any pictures, but suffice it to say it looked really, really, really, incredibly super dorky.  And that's on a scale calibrated to where a scrawny pale dude in a tiny little Lycra outfit is completely standard.

Wardrobe malfunctions aside, T1 went pretty well.  I got to the rack just as Alex was leaving (just like last year), and Sam was there too.  Thompson, Davis and White were long gone.  I rode the first 1/4 mile or so of the bike sitting up no-handed giving my suit-fixing effort one last try, but that went nowhere so as soon as I made the turn out of the park onto the road it was down in the aerobars and back to business.

The first part of the bike went well.  I felt like I had decent legs and manged to bridge the gap up to Sam within the first couple miles.  There's a u-turn about 6 miles in where you get a good look at the field, so I knew I was sitting in 5th with DKT, Davis, White and Hooke in front of me.

About 10 or so miles in we got to the infamous Garvin Heights climb.  About a mile long at a 9% average grade.  Last year I swapped out my usual 11-23 cassette for a 12-25 and the extra granny gear enabled me to stay in the saddle and spin up pretty comfortably.  I ended up selling an old wheelset with the 12-25 on it a couple weeks ago, so this year it was stand up and stomp in the 23 tooth or bust.  It ended up not working out too bad.  I could see White and Hooke right in front of me the whole way up the hill and I put pretty good time into them on the climb.  I ended up catching and passing White right at the top.

At this point the race between Alex and me was playing out like a replay of last year.  He had a 20-30 second gap on me at the top of the hill and I steadily closed it over the flat stretch on top and the fast descent back into town.  I ended up passing him with about a mile left, within 100 yards or so from where I caught him last year.

Alex came up along side me running through T2 as I was wrestling with my malfunctioning suit trying to get the top portion off and just like last year, we headed out onto the run course right next to each other.  Last year I went for broke in mile 1, opened up a decent gap right away and held on for dear life for the rest of the race.  I'm running much better now than I was at this point last year, so I figured if that strategy was good then it should be even better now and drilled it hard coming out of T2.

Since the run is an out-and-back you get a good look at the entire field at the turn.  DKT and Davis were way out front, but I had a 30+ second gap on Hooke and a couple minutes on Janicki and White, so a podium finish was in order providing I didn't totally implode.  Luckily I didn't and I held on for 3rd, crossing the line at 1:57:44, a 34 second improvement over my 2010 time.

Trinona 2011 marked a major milestone in my triathlon adventures -- my first ever oversize novelty check!

Money momentum!

What the above picture doesn't show is a hastily scribbled-out typo that is conveniently hidden behind the gear shifter (5-speed manual FTW!):

All man, baby!

I was unaware that they even had a female-to-male transsexual division, much less that I was in it.

This brings my total prize money haul for the 2011 season to the princely sum of $600.  Which on one hand is totally awesome because I usually do this for no prize money whatsoever.  But on the other hand, given all of the time spent training:

Actually Napoleon, it's probably less than that...

Even so... it's nice to know the post-race burrito and beer fund is being maintained by the racing itself.

Overall this was a very good race for me.  I lost a little bit more time on the swim than I would've liked and my bike split was a handful of seconds slower than last year, but I more than made up for it by knocking almost a full minute off of the run, and Trinona was definitely one of my better run efforts of the 2010 season.  Hopefully I can stay healthy and keep running well as the season wears on.

Buffalo Triathlon

It's Monday evening, I feel like I just lost a fight, and I can barely breathe.  That can only mean that the Minnesota tri season is now in full swing.  I'm apparently virulently allergic to whatever that green scuz is that grows in our lake water, because every time I do a local race with an open water swim I get completely knocked on my ass for a day or two afterward.  Good times.

Buffalo has always been one of my favorite local races.  It's one of the bigger races in the area in terms of attendance (~1,500 between the sprint and Olympic distance races), and it seems like whenever you get that many people together for an event you get a critical mass of energy that the smaller races just can't quite duplicate.  Despite the large field they still manage to run the event smoothly and keep the entry fee reasonable.  Basically, you get the "big race" vibe (tons of spectators, great organization, prize money, etc.), without the big race bullshit (high entry fees, mandatory day-before packet pickup, long lines for everything, etc.).

Buffalo always imports a big name pro to headline the elite field.  This year it was Chris Legh, winner of multiple Ironman and 70.3 races.  One of the coolest things about triathlon is that it affords regular schmucks like me the opportunity to race head to head against guys who have their own Gatorade commercial.  There aren't too many sports where that holds true.  If I were to show up at a Vikings game, throw a helmet on and run out onto the field, I imagine I'd end up getting my ass kicked and tossed in jail.

Obviously, absent a mechanical or something really weird, Chris would be well off the front.  Looking at the rest of the names on the start list I expected the remaining two podium spots to be fought out between me, Sam Janicki and Jon Balabuck.

The Pre-Race Jams

On Sunday I went with Reroute to Remain by In Flames for the drive out to Buffalo.  If you don't like In Flames, you probably shouldn't tell me, because I'd be liable to light a guitar on fire and break it on your face, and then I'd have to go to prison, and you'd have a burned up broken face.  Not cool.

In Flames We Trust.

The Race

I'm pretty sure I was the last person in the elite wave to check in.  Of course all of the racks were jammed full by that point.  There was however a sliver of space open on Chris Legh's reserved rack right next to bike in/out, and he was nice enough to let me weasel in there.  Lesson learned -- show up late, get the best spot.  Suck it, early birds.

After an abbreviated warm up jog I maneuvered into my wetsuit and made my way down to the lake.  I got about 5 minutes of easy swimming in before I had to get into the start corral.  The swim start was weird.  They announced one minute to go, and then nothing at all until they blew the horn.  Usually they would give a 10 second warning or something.  I was caught completely unprepared.  According to my wife I was looking up on shore when the horn blew.

Not surprisingly, being that I was pointed the wrong direction when the horn blew, my start sucked balls.  I took a couple solid kicks to the face in the middle of the scrum, had a few nice big gulps of Lake Buffalo, and just churned my arms and legs like a maniac for a minute or two.  By the time I finally settled down and started sighting, I found myself a good 30 yards off to the right of the buoy line all by myself.  Not solid.

Once I got myself back on course the swim was pretty uneventful.  I managed to latch onto some dude's feet and basically rode him all the way to the end.  It was really easy sitting back there, but the couple times I did try to go around, I'd redline for 20-30 seconds and only manage to get even with the guy who was pulling me, so I'd drop back and get on his feet again. I got out of the water a couple ticks under 20 minutes, which is decent for me.  I could've got out of the draft, worked my ass off and maybe come in 15-20 seconds faster, but the net result for my race likely would've been pretty lousy had I chosen to go that route.  Overall I'll give myself a D- for the first 200 meters and a B+ for the other 1300 or so.

T1 at Buffalo feels like a neverending uphill deathmarch.  That transition area is huge.  This was my maiden voyage in my new wetsuit, but it came off without incident and then it was on to the bike.  I did see Sam running out the bike exit as I was approaching my rack, which was encouraging.  He beat me by 30 seconds in a 500yd race at a masters swim meet back in January, so I was expecting to be at least a minute behind at T1.  But if I'm seeing him in T1 I know I'm only 30 seconds or so back at worst.

The race almost went completely off the rails about 30 seconds into the bike.  I was reaching down to strap into my left shoe and took my eyes off the road for a second.  I rode into a manhole cover which was slightly below flush with the pavement and was treated to the not-so-awesome sound of my water bottle skidding down the road for the second race in a row.  Being that there wasn't a cloud in the sky and I was already thirsty and hot as hell, I had no choice but to stop and pick it up.  Spotting the field 20-30 seconds at the start of the bike portion of every race is no way to go through life.  To make matters worse, there was a group of 4 guys coming up behind me that I had to sit there and wait for before I could safely get myself back out onto the road and moving.  Craptacular.

Artist's rendition of me stopped on the course picking my bottle up off the ground.

Once I finally got going again the bike went pretty well.  The course is slightly long (41K), but it's just about dead flat and there's enough space on most of the turns to take them full speed.  I reeled in a few guys on the first loop and ran into the mother of all traffic jams on the second.  The course was new this year and was a two loop affair for the Olympic distance competitors with the sprint folks doing one.  By the time the Olympic race hit the second loop, the entire sprint race was out there.  It was actually kind of fun.  Almost like weaving through backed up city traffic except it was bikes instead of buses and SUV's.

I finally caught up to Sam and Jon with about 5 miles or so to go and went around for the pass.  I could tell going by that it just wasn't Sam's day.  He looked like he was in some serious pain for the pace he was riding and didn't really contest the pass at all.  I later found out that he was hanging tough just a handful of seconds back from Legh on the first loop when his legs cramped up.  A couple salt tabs and a few more miles in the legs and the days of my old ass riding away from Sam should be just about over.    

Jon passed me once with 2-3 miles to go, but I went for the re-pass as soon as I had dropped back and we came into T2 together.  I had a blazing transition by my standards and got out about 10 seconds up on him.  My bike split was 59:10, which works out to 25.9mph.  I would have easily been 26+ had I not made that unscheduled pitstop for the bottle.  Not that they hand out prizes for bike splits or anything, but big round numbers are cool.  Still, that's an encouraging split given that I haven't felt super strong on the bike this season.  I'll give myself an F- for the first mile and a solid A- for the remaining 24.

Jon's 10K PR is several minutes faster than mine, so I had but one card to play at this point:  go kamikaze pace out of T2 and hope like hell I catch lightning in a bottle and hang on.  This worked out great for the first half of the run as I was sitting on a 30-40 second lead at the first turnaround and was predictably a disaster for the second half as he gradually reeled me back in as I faded.  He passed me for the final time with about 1.5 miles to go and that was it.  I was in survival mode by then and was damn happy to still be on the podium at all.  If I'm going to get passed by anybody in the final miles of a race, it may as well be Jon on account of the fact that he may be the nicest guy on the planet.

I didn't catch any mile splits on the run, but I'm guessing it would've been something really ridiculous like 5:15 for the first mile fading to 6:10 for the last.  That's every bit as unpleasant as it sounds.  Still, the 35:37 I clocked is the fastest I've ever covered this course by nearly a minute, so I cant complain too much.  I'll give myself an A for effort, and a B- for execution.

When I got to the finish line I was very surprised to see 1:56:xx on the clock.  I barely got my goggles on in time for the swim start, so I paid no attention to starting my watch.  I had no idea what my overall time was at any point during the race and was expecting something much closer to 2-flat at the finish.  I'll happily take a 1:56, especially given that I left a few seconds out there on the bike.

Next up is a few days of unintentional tapering (AKA business trip) followed by another Olympic distance bloodbath at Trinona.