Alright, first things first. Here's an obligatory cute baby pic, taken at his very first big league ball game:
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| Awwwwww... |
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.
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| We're not in Minnesota anymore, are we? |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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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!
