Age Group Nationals

Cryptozoology

Did you know Lake Champlain has a legit lake monster? Yep, sure does. His name is Champ. And  he has his own Wikipedia page, several fan sites and is the mascot of my new 2nd favorite minor league baseball team. My favorite minor league baseball team would naturally be the Beloit Snappers. I judge minor league baseball teams purely on the awesomeness of their mascot.

Anyway, I recently headed out to Vermont to search for lake monsters race USAT Age Group Nationals. Since my aunt, uncle and grandmother live in New Hampshire just a couple hours south of Burlington, Tiff and Michael came along as well. Speaking of Mikey, he's a full on walker now...

He's still in the Frankenstein/straight arms and legs stage, but I have faith that he'll adopt my trademark T-rex running style soon enough.

The Pre-Race Jams

How hard do they party in Sweden? This hard...

The Race

Swim

My swimming A-game is a little like the elusive Champ. Somewhere I'm sure there's a grainy photo of me exiting the water in an Olympic distance race in under 20 minutes. Some less than credible people (they get in a pool at 6:30 every morning, so they must be at least a little nuts) could tell you about sets I've done in practice that indicate I should be a sub-20-in-a-wetsuit kind of guy. But somehow on race day I tend to find a way to make that not happen.

I got excited looking at the map of the swim course before the race this year because it looked like they got rid of the first turn. In 2011 there was a 90 degree turn right about at 200m. That turn buoy was the mother of all aquatic mosh pits. I probably would have had better luck standing up and walking over the top of people like a lumberjack on a log jam than I did trying to swim through there. On the map it looked like USAT listened to the complaints and gave us a straight shot out to ~600m, which would give the pack plenty of time to thin out and make the 1st turn much less of a fistfight. I was a bit disappointed when I showed up on race day to see that they set the course exactly the same as last year, shitty 1st turn and all.

What that all means is that the best way to swim this course is to go 100% balls out to the 1st turn and hope to get through ahead of the bulk of the pack. Sure, it sucks to start a 2 hour race completely smashed, but it beats the alternative, which is getting slowed to a standstill and punched in the face repeatedly.

Given all of the above I decided to line up toward the inside for the in-water start and did my fair share of elbowing and kicking to hold my position on the front row while we were treading water waiting for the horn. Once the horn went off I put my head down, windmilled my arms and kicked like a maniac trying not to get swallowed up by the bulk of the pack. It worked fairly well as I stayed toward the front got around the dreaded buoy with no real issues and surprisingly little contact.

After rounding the turn the swim got nasty. The wind was blowing hard out of the Northwest producing 3-4 foot chop and we were swimming straight North, which is a problem for me since I breathe left which meant every breath was a roll of the dice as to whether I'd get a mouthful of air or a mouthful of lake. This was easily the toughest conditions I've ever had to race in. To make matters worse I tend to veer right even in calm water, so given an even harder push to the right from the wind and waves I promptly found myself way off course. Looking back the smart thing to do would have been to cut straight back over to the left and try to get on some feet and let some other chump fight his way through the chop for me, but I rarely do the smart thing in the water and kept trying to re-sight on the buoy line to minimize the extra distance, which resulted in me swimming that entire leg of the course completely by myself.

Eventually I found my way to the 2nd turn and managed to navigate between there and the 3rd turn without undue difficulty, although by this time I was right in the thick of the earlier waves so there was a bit of zig-zagging to get around people. Once I rounded the 3rd turn I again found myself completely alone, with everyone else 10-20m off to my left, only this time I was right on the buoy line. It seems the wind was pushing everyone else over to the left and my tendency to pull right was keeping me swimming straight. Alright! My time to shine!

I got around the last two turns fairly easily but took them very wide to avoid traffic. Again I ended up way over to the right on the final leg leading into the boat ramp, which kind of sucked because there were weeds over there that felt like barbed wire on my face, but at least this time I didn't add much extra distance. I finally ran up the ramp amidst a sea of folks from previous waves without a single cap from my wave in the immediate vicinity. I chose to do the race sans watch so I had no idea what the damage was, but at the time I figured it had to be substantial. I was actually pleasantly surprised to see 22:32 for my swim split in the results after the race.  That's 30 seconds faster than my 2011 split in way, way, way worse conditions (and likely a non-trivial amount of bonus distance). Still not the elusive A-game because I easily left a minute or two out there by wandering off course and swimming alone, but I'll give myself a B-minus for the effort.

T1

I was racked toward the far end of the space allotted for the M35-39er's, so I was able to get a pretty good assessment of where I stood relative to my age group as I ran toward my bike. There were very few missing bikes and Mark Harms was pulling his bike off the rack right as I ran by, putting him only 30 seconds or so up on me. Mark is historically a much faster swimmer than me, so if we're in T1 at the same time I'm doing alright. I got stood up at the mount line for a few seconds by some people from the earlier waves, but that's pretty much to be expected with a wave start so no big deal.

Bike

About 200m into the bike course there was a fairly rough railroad crossing. I felt something brush my leg as I crossed the tracks, but didn't think anything of it as I looked down and confirmed that my bottle was still in place. I found out what had hit my leg a few seconds later after I finished strapping into my shoes and got down into the aerobars. It was one of my aerobar pads. Oh well, nothing to do but keep going, so I did the rest of the ride with my left arm sitting on the velcro about 1/2" lower than my right arm, which was still on the remaining pad.

I scooped up a few guys from my wave within the first handful of uphill miles and caught sight of Mark somewhere around mile 8-ish. I rode absolutely as hard as I could while passing him in hopes of building a gap. I fought the urge to look back all the way out the the turnaround where I saw that I had a pretty good sized gap, maybe 30-45 seconds or so. There's not much to say about the remainder of the ride. It's net downhill from the turnaround back to transition, so I rode hard-but-not-too-hard and started thinking about setting up a good run.

T2

I was happy to see that there were zero bikes on my rack when I arrived. My position was confirmed by the race announcer who said that I was the first M35-39 off the bike. The actual transition was pretty crusty. I had some trouble getting into my running shoes which cost me a few seconds, but I managed to get all the way through transition before Mark or anyone else from M35-39 got off the bike, so that was nice.

Run

This run almost killed me last year. It starts out with a very steep ~1/4mi long uphill straight out of transition. I heard people after the race saying that it's a 17% grade, but that seems a little generous. It's goes up 150 vertical feet in roughly 1/4mi, which my back of the envelope math tells me is on the order of 11%, which seems a bit more realistic. Either way, it is not a pleasant stretch of road to run up.

The correct way to tackle this course is to go relatively easy up the hill, recover a bit on top and then let 'er rip the rest of the way. Last year I did the exact opposite. I attacked the shit out of that hill and continued to run like a complete maniac for the first couple miles only to completely and predictably fall apart in the last mile of the race and put up my most disappointing run split of the 2011 season.

This year I had my head on straight and kept myself in check on the hill. It was more of a walk/shuffle near the top than a proper run. Once I got over the top I was able to open up my stride a bit and start clicking off 5:30-ish miles. I started in wave 5 and waves 1-4 were the 50+ age groups, but there are some fast old dudes out there so I had plenty of targets up the road to keep me motivated. I would also be lying if I said I didn't sneak a few looks back to make sure Mark wasn't sneaking up on me.

Taking it easy up the hill paid off and I was able to keep it together over the last few miles and finish strong. I ended up reeling in all but 2 of the early starters, both of whom went off 25 minutes ahead of me in wave 1. The final time was 1:57:52, with a 34:39 run split which was especially satisfying after not even cracking 36 minutes last year. At the end of the day that ended up being good for 10th overall.

Since I was only the 3rd guy to cross the line and the first under 2 hours the announcer made me feel like a big deal. They even put up a finishing tape, which was a new experience for nationals. In both of my previous nationals I started in one of the back waves and came across the finish line as just another anonymous face in the cast of thousands. This year I finished all alone with nobody within a minute on either side with 100% of the attention focused on me. I clowned around a bit in the final 100m delivering a few high fives to the spectators, which was fun, but getting to the line 3 seconds sooner would have bumped me up to ninth in the overall standings. Ah well... lesson learned for next year. Go hard all the way to the line and pretend you're in a finish line sprint, because you probably are.

The Aftermath

Mere moments after crossing the line I was whisked away to the doping control tent by a USADA official. That makes me 3 for 3 on being selected for drug testing at AG Nationals. This year I had the foresight to have them take me through the bag drop on the way so I could get into some dry clothes. That made the process about a million times more tolerable than it was in 2010 or 2011. I made it out in just a shade over 2 hours this year, which is a massive post-race drug test PR.

The awards ceremony was later that night at the host hotel and I had the pleasure of climbing up to the top step as the new National Champ of the M35-39 age group. The Minnesota contingent was loud as always and we made sure to class the place up with a couple styrofoam coolers full of PBR. Not a bad day for me at all.

I'll end this one with a huge shout-out to everyone who helps to make a trip like this possible. TCMC for general awesomeness. Grand Performance bike shop for keeping me geared up properly. My Aunt Val and Uncle Bob for outstanding hospitality and being extra cool about having a one year old wrecking machine unleashed on their house. And last but not least my beautiful wife Tiffany and awesome son Michael who inexplicably see nothing wrong with me flying across the country to compete for a prize purse of zero dollars. You guys are amazing!

Lifetime Fitness Tri and a Bunch of Other Stuff

So it's been a couple months since my last update.  But hey, you get what you pay for... and I'm writing this for free. I've raced a buttload in the last few weeks. Here's the TL;DR writeups for a few races prior to a long-winded retelling of my day at LTF.

Trinona

My knee was pretty banged up after crashing at Apple and I missed some training because of it. Not surprisingly I felt kind of sluggish at Trinona and finished over a minute slower than last year. But I still managed 3rd, which is the best case scenario with DKT and Hedgecock on the starting line. Good enough.

Lake Waconia

This was one of those rare days where I was firing on all cylinders. I swam about as well as I'm capable of, biked to the front and hung on during the run to cross the line in first by a substantial margin, setting a huge personal best on that course on a day when pretty much nobody else did. Alas, the referees had other ideas. Oh well, they can take away my win, but they can never take away my giant freakin' banner.

North Mankato Triathlon

I wasn't originally planning on doing this race at the beginning of the season but ended up registering last minute. Having grown up in North Mankato, this race is basically a trip down memory lane. The race itself was pretty straightforward. I got out of the water in 5th or 6th, took the lead about 3 miles into the bike, got off the bike way out front and cruised it in on the run. The bike course is definitely the highlight of this race. It's an out-and-back that follows a really cool winding road along the Minnesota river before a pretty legit little climb out of the river valley. And best of all, the course is closed to traffic. I dare anyone to find me another race anywhere with closed roads where you can register day-of for less than a hundred bucks. I doubt you can, because that combination probably does not exist anywhere else.

Lifetime Fitness Triathlon

LTF has always been "the one that got away" for me. I've done this race twice previously and come up just short of my goal both times. The first time was 2009. Back then I had never broken 2 hours in an Olympic distance race, so naturally my goal was to finish in a time that started with a 1. My finish time in 2009: 2:00:01.6. FAIL. We got to wear wetsuits that year too so I couldn't even use that excuse.

In 2010 I showed up looking for a podium spot in the elite amateur wave. I kicked off the day with an inexcusably awful 23:35 swim and only managed to claw my way back up to 4th by the time I crossed the line. I also didn't break 2 hours again. Double FAIL.

This year was going to be different. I was coming off of strong races at Waconia and North Mankato and had been killing it in training in the weeks leading up to the race. This was the year I was going to finally stand on the LTF podium.

The Pre-Race Jams

The Safety Fire is the best band you've never heard of. You should all buy their debut album Grind the Ocean. The guitar playing on this record is SICK.  And that's in all caps for a reason. One of the hardest things to pull off in music is to write stuff that's technically interesting but doesn't come off as pretentious wankery. These guys absolutely nail it.

So go buy their record. I don't want my kid to grow up in a world where Justin Bieber is a millionaire while these guys tour in a crappy old conversion van and work shitty day jobs. Do it for the children.

The Race

I don't know what my deal is, but I've been having really lackluster starts this year. LTF was no different as I was blown off the back of the lead pack inside of about 5 seconds. Some douchelord also took a really flagrant grab at my ankle and almost took my timing chip off. Luckily I had the foresight to safety pin it before the race so it stayed on, but I could feel the loose strap flapping around back there which was really annoying.  Oh well... head down and keep going.

The whole way out to the first turn I was bumping into Sean Cooley. He had the inside line at the turn and got a body length on me around the buoy. I tried to slot in behind him for the draft but I couldn't hang and he gradually pulled away. I went solo the rest of the way and just tried to keep a good turnover rate going. I ended up getting out of the water about 20 seconds behind Dan Hedgecock and about 20 seconds in front of Patrick Parish. My official swim split was 22:12, which is about a C- swim for me. That works out to 1:21/100yd if my gorilla math is to be trusted.  I warm up faster than that in the pool, so I have no excuse for crapping out these kind of times at races. Bleh...

T1 was slow since I had to fix the loose strap on my chip, but I managed to stay ahead of Patrick and get rolling on the bike without tripping over anything. Once I got strapped in and up to speed I could see Dan and about a half dozen other guys a good way up the road ahead of me. I rode pretty much as hard as I could for the first couple miles trying to catch up. I finally caught the group going through the roundabout in Minnehaha Park. Just as I was starting to work my way through the crowd I saw Sean peel off to the right and go the wrong way out of the roundabout. Bummer dude, I've been there.

Once I got through the pack I put the hammer down again to pass Dan, only to be re-passed about a minute later on River Rd. Dan and I would ride the rest of the race like that. As soon as one of us started slacking the other would blast on by. Between the constant back and forth between me and Dan and the twists and turns of the course that was without a doubt the most fun I've had on the bike during a race.

We caught a handful of guys on the St. Paul side of the river and finally got to the front of the race when we passed Jake Rhyner on the bridge back over into Minneapolis. The race almost came completely unglued for me at about mile 18 or so as we headed toward Lake Harriet on the parkway. Dan and I had been getting a fair amount of attention from a referee moto for a few miles, which is understandable as we'd been riding within a handful of bike lengths of each other the whole race. But we both know the drill and were riding clean (completing our passes in a timely manner, dropping back when passed, staying to the right, etc.), so I wasn't too worried about the ref being there. What I didn't account for were my greasy ass hands being unable to hold on to a water bottle. I squeezed the bottle to take a drink and the thing squirted out of my hand, right over my shoulder and damn near hit the motorcycle that was about 10 feet behind me. I didn't even see where it ended up so I chose to keep going rather than stop, turn around and look for it. I thought there was zero chance that went unseen and was 100% sure I had just torpedoed my podium chances by earning myself an extra 2 minutes.

Over the next couple miles I let Dan open up a ~200m gap on me as I replayed the bottle incident in my head and scolded myself for being such a klutz. Eventually I got my head back into the game and started hammering again. I figured we were far enough off the front at this point that even with a bonus 2:00 I could still hold onto a podium spot if I ran well. I caught back up to Dan on the back side of Lake Harriet and we did the pass/re-pass thing a few more times before finally arriving back at transition.

In T2 I did something completely out of character -- put up the #1 time. I've never done that at a "big" race. I look forward to someday regaling my grandkids with tales of that fateful day in 2012 when I bitchslapped the entire field in T2.

Dan must have made himself breakfast or something in T2, because I managed to stay in front of him for about the first half mile or so before he came around and started to fade off into the distance. At the first out and back on Cedar I saw that I had a little over a minute on Patrick and another 30 seconds or so on Jake. This was more or less the exact same gap I had on Patrick at that point of the run at Best of the US, where I managed to hold him off by 12 seconds, so this one was likely going to go right down to the wire as well.

At the 2nd out and back Dan was a solid minute up the road, while Patrick had closed to just under a minute. I never saw Jake on the 2nd lap, which was encouraging since I was still assuming I needed to cross the line 2 minutes in front of him to secure 3rd. Coming down the homestretch I knew Patrick was closing fast since I could hear people cheering for him behind me. Luckily for me the finish line came at 10 kilometers instead of 11 and I was able to hold him off, hitting the finish line in 1:57:46, which is an enormous PR for me on this course. My previous best was a wetsuit-aided 2-flat back in 2009.

Patrick crossed the line about 20 seconds back and I began the waiting game of looking at the clock to see if I had to worry about being knocked off the podium if I ended up taking a penalty for the bottle drop. I breathed a giant sigh of relief as Jake was the next guy across the line in 2:00:35, which meant I would end up no worse than 3rd.

At the end of the day all of my fretting about a possible penalty was for naught as my 1:57:46 and 2nd place stood on the final results. Apparently the ref was busy birdwatching or something. Maybe it was karmic payback for Waconia. Whatever... I'll take it. All in all a pretty solid day for me.

Apple Duathlon

I'm behind schedule again.  Weird, I know.  I've actually raced twice since my last update: Apple Duathlon and Trinona Triathlon.  This one will cover Apple.  I'll write up Trinona at some unspecified later date.  It may be out of order since the annual Lake Waconia throwdown is tomorrow and I'll probably write about that one while it's still fresh.

The Pre-Race Jams

Stabbing the Drama by Soilwork.  This is like the Chipotle steak burrito of metal records.  Sure, you could go to some little hole in the wall mom and pop Mexican joint on Central Ave. and possibly get a far superior burrito, but you might also get norovirus and spend the next 24 hours hunched over the toilet.  It's a high risk/high reward situation.  Instead  you could play it safe and go to Chipotle, spend your 7 bucks, and get the same burrito you've had a billion times before.  No surprises, just 1200 delicious calories in a neat little foil package.  Stabbing the Drama is like that.  There's nothing on here that really blows my mind, but it's still a staple of my diet and I find myself listening to it several times a week.

Apple Duathlon

I registered for this one 3 days prior to the race from a hotel room in Key West, FL, about 72 hours post-Florida 70.3  I don't know what I was thinking.  It was the middle of the afternoon.  I wasn't even drunk yet.  All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Since I was on vacation between the two races I can't say I didn't take my recovery easily.  I went for 2 slow jogs totaling about 8 miles and that's it.  Zero bike rides, zero swims.  So I showed up at Apple feeling reasonably decent.  That lasted until about 400m into the first run, when my calves started feeling really tight.  Luckily it was just the "really fucking sore" brand of tight and not the "stop right now you dumbass, you're injured" brand of tight.  I kept plugging away and made it through the first 5K in 16:22, which was good for 6th.

Once out on the bike I quickly made my way up into 4th within the first couple miles.  At about mile 6 or so I caught up to Chad Millner and drilled it up a hill to try to put a good gap on him.  It worked as I didn't see him for the rest of the ride.  Not too long after passing Chad I finally caught sight of Patrick in the lead with Jesson Baumgartner not too far behind.  

Jesson is a med student from Iowa who ran CC in college.  He also competed at Duathlon Nationals in Tucson back in April and crossed the line in 3rd, about a minute ahead of me.  He ran afoul of the referees somewhere along the line though and collected some penalty minutes which backdoored me onto the podium.  We chatted a little before the start at Apple and it turns out the referees never told him what he was penalized for and they didn't post a penalty sheet anywhere after the race.  I highly doubt it was drafting since according to the results nobody who was riding near the same speed as him would've been anywhere near him during the ride, so I'm guessing it was something silly like going on the wrong side of a cone at a turn (which was ridiculously easy to do at Nationals the way they had the course set up).  So it's overwhelmingly likely he got completely jobbed out of a podium spot at Nationals.  He was in pretty good spirits about it whereas I would've been super duper Hulk-smash pissed in that situation.  So he passes the nice-guy test anyway.

I gradually reeled Jesson in over the remainder of the ride and came into transition about 5 seconds back.  I had one of my better transitions ever and got out about 10 seconds in front of him.  However, I managed to crash spectacularly on the timing mat at the run out.  It had started raining with about 5 miles left in the bike and was coming down pretty steadily by the time we made it back to transition.  Turns out those rubber mats are slippery little bastards in the rain and I came down pretty hard on my right knee.  When I got back up and set out on the run something was definitely not right with that knee.  I honestly thought about just pulling out of the race right there, but I looked back at transition and saw that nobody else had come in yet, so even slightly gimped I was still looking good for the podium so I decided to stick it out.

I was still running pretty gingerly up the hill leading out of T2 when Jesson flew by me on his was to the fastest run split of the day.  Luckily for me the knee loosened up a bit after about a mile and I was able to pick up the pace a bit on the backstretch.  I looked back on every single corner and even a couple times on the long backstretch straightaway, but I never saw anyone gaining on me so I had the luxury of not having to push too hard.  I eventually crossed the line in 3rd limping and damn near hypothermic in the pouring rain.

So, moral of the story... racing a duathlon six days after a half Ironman is most definitely a stupid idea, but I didn't die and the injuries weren't permanent, so all's well that ends well.

Apple Duathlon Results

Florida 70.3

Viva Las Vegas


I actually qualified for the 70.3 World Championship in Las Vegas last year by winning my age group in New Orleans, but I ended up skipping 70.3 worlds to race Best of the US. That worked out alright, so no real regrets, but I was still somewhat bummed at missing out on Vegas.

So this year as soon as I found out the BOUS race was moving to spring of 2013, I immediately started looking for a 70.3 race to qualify at. I pretty quickly settled on the Florida 70.3 for the simple reason that it was the only race that fit into my schedule. Tiffany also decided that she and Michael would make the trip as well and we'd spend a few days after the race bumming around Florida family vacation style.

The Pre-Race Jams


It turns out sharing a hotel room with a 10 month old baby is not a solid strategy for a good nights sleep, so when my alarm went off at 4AM on race morning I felt like absolute crap. I knew I had to bring out the big guns to turn this situation around, so I cranked up Imperium by Machine Head and stuck that shit on repeat for the half-hour ride from the hotel to the race site.

This song is like an owner's manual for life. It makes me feel like I can wake up, eat a bowl of broken glass and nails for breakfast, run on over to NASA and punt a rocket into orbit. Going hard for 4+ hours in the Florida heat and humidity is nothing...


On to the race...


Swim 

Unfortunately I was in the 15th of 18 waves, which meant I had a solid hour and a half to kill between transition closing and my actual start. I spent most of that time pacing up and down the shoreline watching the 1500 or so people who got to start ahead of me go through the swim. At a boat launch ramp about 20 yards from where we entered the water I saw this lovely sign: 

One silver lining for getting stuck in a late wave... by the time I get in the alligators should already be full. The water was in the mid-80's and super gross. My non-scientific guess is that it was about 50% water, 30% mud and 20% alligator poop. Finally my wave was up, they lined us up in knee deep "water", fired an air horn and we were off. I took a front and center spot on the line and jumped out to a pretty decent start. After the initial washing machine cleared a couple hundred meters out it looked like there was one guy from my wave well off the front already, then a small pack of a half-dozen or so being led by me. I just kept going rather than falling back into the pack to draft since we were already getting mixed up with stragglers from earlier waves so I figured holding a draft would be next to impossible in all that traffic anyway. 

The rest of the swim was spent weaving around traffic and absorbing occasional frog kicks to the kidneys from random breaststrokers. I never saw another cap from my wave after the first turn buoy. My watch showed 29:30 at the swim exit. I was pretty disappointed with that time, but looking at the results I was 3rd in my AG and either 1st or 2nd in my wave (there were 2 waves of M35-39, I was in the 2nd) depending on what happened to the guy who jumped out to the lead at the start so it couldn't have been as lousy as the time would seem to indicate. I'll have to wait until I do a swim where I'm not changing course and/or running into somebody every other stroke to get an honest assessment of my 2012 open water swimming ability. At least I wasn't eaten by a gator.

T1

T1 was my 2nd worst transition ever (my #1 worst transition ever is the 2009 Liberty half, where I had to sit down and bandage a bunch of blisters on my feet before setting off on the bike). I kicked it off by running right past my rack and getting lost, then temporarily forgetting my race number while I scanned up and down the rows looking for my bike. Once I finally found my bike I threw my helmet on, grabbed the bike off the rack and ran a few steps before realizing I forgot to put my race belt on. For some reason WTC requires that a number be worn on the bike, so not wanting to risk a silly penalty I laid the bike down on the ground and did an about face to return to my rack to retrieve my race belt. I'm sure all of this only cost me 30 seconds or so, but it felt like an eternity. It's always demoralizing to piss away time like that so early into what I know is going to be a tough race.

Bike 

I started out the bike in full hammer mode since I figured I was off pace from a slower than expected swim and an epic fail transition. There was a pretty good tailwind the first half and I was holding in the 28mph range while yelling my throat raw at people to move to the right. The roads were pretty narrow with no shoulders for the most part so there was very little room to navigate around slower riders. And of course pretty much nobody was riding to the right like they're supposed to. There aren't enough motorcycles in Sturgis to properly enforce the position rules in the AG waves at a WTC race. 

There was also quite a bit of auto traffic as the roads were open. I lost maybe a minute or two having to wait behind cars as they waited for a safe spot to pass the line of bikes in front of them. Somewhere around mile 30 the terrain started to undulate a bit and we lost our tailwind so the bike started to get much more difficult. Luckily I had already moved up through most of the field at that point so my lungs and throat got a break from the yelling at least. I ended up jumping off the bike with a 2:12:08 split, which was pretty much in the center of the 2:10 - 2:15 I was expecting. I had no idea where I was relative to the rest of my AG or the amateur race as a whole, but I figured I couldn't be in too bad of shape since I wasn't passed the entire ride. I also felt like I did a decent job pacing myself and setting myself up for a good run.  

T2 

T2 was brisk, except for the few seconds I always give away putting on socks. New goal for this season: HTFU and complete a half-iron race without socks... skin of my feet be damned. 

Run 

The run course was extremely challenging. It was 3 loops through the residential streets around the lake with two sizeable hills in the first mile and a half. I was hoping to run right on 6:00/mi pace and nailed it the first loop and was actually feeling pretty decent. The wheels started coming off about midway through the second loop. At around mile 6 I noticed that I had stopped sweating and was starting to shiver a bit, which generally means I'm getting to the point of being dangerously dehydrated. Not wanting to risk a trip to the med tent I decided to do something I haven't done in a race since 2007... walk. From mile 7 onward I briefly walked at every aid station while I guzzled down whatever liquid I could get my hands on. The walk breaks were only about 10-20 seconds each and I was keeping ~6:30 pace between aid stations, so I wasn't losing a ton of time, but it was still pretty demoralizing. I thought for sure I was throwing away the AG win and possibly even a Vegas qualifier.

Because of the chaotic nature of a late wave start and the 3 loop run course I never really had a good idea where I was relative to the rest of the field. I didn't see a single soul from my AG during the 1st lap, which I now know was because I was already at the front, but at the time I thought there had to be at least a couple guys from the previous wave out there in front of me. I passed a handful of 35-39 guys during the 2nd lap, but they were clearly running much slower and I was pretty sure they were a lap behind.  At around mile 8 a 30-34 guy went past me running very strong. He started either 5 or 10 minutes behind me depending on which wave he was in, so crunching some numbers in my head I quickly came to the conclusion that if he was also on lap 2 he was on sub-4 pace and it was basically hopeless for me and if he was still on lap 1 then he was on 4:20-ish pace and as long as I kept putting one foot in front of the other I had nothing to worry about. Either way it made no sense risking a complete blowup trying to go with him so I let him go.

About halfway through the third lap I spotted a couple 35-39 guys up ahead of me who looked strong enough to conceivably be on the 3rd lap as well. I put on as much of a surge as I could to pass them. I wanted to get well ahead by the next aid station because I was still planning on walking through it in order to get more fluids in. It worked as their footsteps faded into the distance and I never saw them again. Looking at the results I'm pretty sure they were on lap 2 anyway.


At about mile 12 I saw the 30-34 guy who passed me back on lap 2 and he became my new target as I tried to lift my pace again. I was still aware that because of the wave start I was either 10 minutes up or down on him, but at that point I no longer cared. It was a point of pride. This guy passed me like I wasn't even moving earlier and now it looks like he's struggling and I need to return the favor. I caught up to about 20 yards back of him when he reached the turnoff for the finish chute... and kept going for another lap. I guess I was 10 minutes up on him after all. I gave myself a mental fist bump, turned into the finish chute and high fived a few kids as I jogged it in for a 4:11:51.


Immediately after my chip was removed I went straight to a nearby picnic table and bent over it dry heaving. Three different EMT's approached me and asked if I needed to go to the med tent but I managed to convince them all that this was standard behavior for me after a half-iron race and avoided the IV needle. It was however a little disconcerting that nothing at all was coming up given that I had managed to take in two full cups of water and/or sports drink at the previous five aid stations. After the dry heaves stopped I went straight to the post-race food tent and guzzled four cans of Coke and two of Sprite and started to feel somewhat normal again.

I wandered around the finish line for area for a while looking to see if results were posted anywhere, but they were nowhere to be found so I resigned myself to sitting on the ground in the food tent until transition finally reopened and I could get to my phone to check the results online. I ran into Jeff Fleig from LaCrosse, who I had previously met last summer at TriStar Minnesota and we sat there comparing notes from our races for a bit. It's always nice to run into a familiar face when you're 1,000 miles from home.

Once they finally reopened transition and I was able to get the results I was blown away that my 4:11:51 was good enough for 11th overall and first amateur. I was pretty confident that I had my Vegas spot sewn up, but I figured that with all the walking I did that someone out there had to have managed better. Some days it really is all about the bike I guess.

After heading out for some nutritious recovery chow at a nearby McDonalds, I reported to the Vegas signup table credit card in hand and claimed my spot, fully intent on actually attending this year. Mission accomplished.

World Turtle Day


Did you know that May 23rd was World Turtle Day? No?!?!? Get with the program.

Most people finding themselves with a few spare days in central Florida with a small child would choose to go to Disney and proceed to drain their wallet for the privilege of spending hours and hours standing in line. Well, most people are chumps. We chose to go the full-on nerd route, first taking little Mikey over to the Kennedy Space Center and then down to the Keys where we were visited the Turtle Hospital, a facility that rescues and rehabs sick or injured sea turtles for eventual release. Yep, that picture below is me wearing a turtle shirt, holding my kid who is also wearing a turtle shirt, standing in front of a building filled with sea turtles (bonus nerdery... the picture was taken by my wife who was also wearing a turtle shirt). Keepin' it awesome in 2012.

Duathlon Nationals

Still Alive

Wow... it's been a solid six months since I've updated my craptacular blog. I'm sure my one or two loyal readers (hi mom!) are very disappointed. Truth is I've been on my grind. If I want to get any training done these days it has to happen in the early morning, so setting the alarm for 5AM has become completely standard.  Between work, training, and trying to keep my kid alive and my wife sane there isn't room for much else. My master plan of regularly posting original content in order to build up a loyal following who I can then proceed to spam with Adsense and affiliate links so I can eventually generate enough revenue to go to the liquor store and buy a 40oz is way behind schedule. I'll try to do better.

Since it worked out so well last time, Patrick Parish and I decided we'd take our show on the road yet again. This time for Duathlon Nationals in Tuscon.

In Duct Tape We Trust

Ever since I forked over my credit card at the luggage counter on the way out to my first fly-in race back in 2010, I've had the dream of cobbling together my own bike boxes and outwitting those greedy bastards.  About a half dozen trips and several hundred dollars in bike fees later I finally got off of my ass to do something about it.  

This trip was the maiden voyage of my DIY ghetto bike boxes.  They're made out of corrugated plastic held together by canvas straps and several hundred feet of duct tape.  The good news is that the bike got there and back without damage, the boxes held up just fine to the rigors of air travel, they actually fit through the x-ray machines so there's less chance the TSA will open them, and they're much easier to carry and get into/out of a car than a traditional bike box.  The bad news is that I only avoided the fee on one leg of the trip.  I can make the frame box substantially smaller by removing the crank, so I'll make that adjustment for the next trip and see how it goes.

The Pre-Race Ridiculousness

For some reason USAT insists on having a mandatory day-before packet pickup and bike check-in for this race.  Since Tucson is about a 2 hour drive from Phoenix you either have to take a really early flight out that morning or head out two days before the race and deal with an extra night away from home.  Since the extra night away from home is not a viable option I went with the really early flight.  I hopped out of bed at 4:30 on Friday morning, said a prayer for my sketchy looking homemade bike boxes as I tossed them in the trunk of the car and headed off to the airport for a 6:15 scheduled departure.

As I was walking across the skyway from the parking ramp to the terminal I noticed an unusually large number of people outside the terminal on the sidewalk.  As I attempted to enter the terminal I found out why... TSA was not letting anyone in.  About every five minutes or so they pushed everyone back farther until we were eventually all back out in the middle of the parking ramp.  After about an hour or so the bomb squad truck rolls up and some guy gets out in the full-on bomb suit just like something out of a movie and heads into the terminal.

Eventually the bomb suit guy comes back outside, gets in the truck and rolls off, but for some reason it's a solid 30 minutes before we get the all clear to go back inside.  It turns out some numbnuts checked a bag with some sort of homemade water filter that looked like a pipe bomb when they x-rayed it.  By now it's about an hour and a half past our scheduled departure time.

When they finally give the all clear I hustle back inside as fast as I can and end up 2nd in line at the Southwest counter.  I say another silent prayer for my plastic and duct tape handiwork and get in the now hour-long line for security screening.  The whole time I'm in line I'm checking the status of my flight on my phone and the departure time keeps getting pushed farther and farther back.  When I clear security I head over to my gate and see the board is displaying no info for my flight at all.  It turns out they sent the thing out about a half hour after TSA declared the bomb scare over.  I can only guess that the plane had approximately zero passengers on board since the vast majority of us had no chance to clear security in that time.  They must've really needed that plane in Phoenix or something.

Luckily I was able to get rerouted onto a flight to St. Louis with a connection to Phoenix that got me in around noon.  Patrick was not so lucky.  He was supposed to be on the same flight, but it took him several hours to get through the luggage check and security lines and he wouldn't be landing in Phoenix until 8PM.

Once I hit the ground I hopped in the rental car and headed toward Tucson with a quick stop at the In-N-Out Burger drive-thru for some pre-race fuel.  Upon arrival in Tucson I threw my bike together like a NASCAR pit stop and made it to packet pickup and bike check-in with about a microsecond to spare. For some reason the packet pickup only went until 4PM. Seriously guys, if you're going to insist on this day-before crap at least extend it into the early evening.  It would make life much easier for people coming from out of town.

I could've had it much worse however. By the time Patrick finally makes it to the hotel I've already been asleep for a couple hours.  

The Pre-Race Jams

In honor of my recent entry into the M35-39 age group, here's an appropriately titled blast from the past:

The Race

Between the time zone change, the travel freakout the day before and general pre-race nervousness both Patrick and I are wide awake by 5AM.  Patrick had negotiated a race morning packet pick up due to the airport drama, so he left for the race site pretty early.  Our wave wasn't going until 8:15, so I sat there and watched TV for a couple hours before I headed out.

Once I arrived I quickly aired up my tires, set up my transition and emptied an entire spray can of sunscreen onto my pasty white midwestern skin.  We actually got pretty lucky with the weather.  It was in the high-70's/low-80's with light winds while we were racing.  It could've easily been much, much hotter and windier.

After a more than likely inadequate warm-up jog I got in the start corral the moment they called my wave.  The start line was extremely narrow and I wanted to stake out a spot on the front row so I wouldn't have to worry about getting boxed in by anyone else.

Right from the gun some maniac takes off at full on kamikaze suicide pace, a couple other guys try to follow, and 1/4mi in I'm sitting in 5th or 6th.  Strangely enough, Patrick is not one of the guys in front of me.  That should've been a giant red flag that I'm probably not pacing this run very intelligently.  At about 1/2mi Patrick finally pulls around.  I hit the first mile marker at 4:55 and I'm somewhere around 7th position nowhere near the leaders.  Assuming that marker was in the right place I think that's my new mile PR.  Even if it wasn't in the right place that opening mile was still damn fast.

Mile 2 is significantly downhill and I clock a 5:13, getting passed by 3 more guys in the process, which is pretty standard for me since I hate running downhill and seem to really suck at it compared to most of the guys I try to race with.  Of course, what goes down must come up, and we soon make the turn to climb back toward transition.  I manage to pass a bunch of guys on the uphill and come into transition 5th in my wave.

I got through transition quickly and headed out onto the bike course still in 5th.  The bike course is a 2-loop out and back with constant rolling hills.  The 50+ wave went out 15 minutes ahead of us, so there was a constant stream of traffic to pass.  Because of all the traffic I never had that great of an idea of where the rest of the guys from my wave were, so I just did my best to keep hammering away.  I made my way around the one and only guy from my wave I ever came into contact with at about mile 9, putting me in 4th.

Shortly after making the turnaround to start the 2nd lap I had one of the scarier moments of my racing life.  Heading into a turn I'm rapidly approaching one of the guys from the earlier wave and screaming "ON YOUR LEFT!" at the top of my lungs.  He seems to have heard me and looks to be setting up for a wide turn so I start to take the inside line, still shouting at him for good measure.  Well, it turns out he must have interpreted "on your left" as "move to the left", because as soon as I get up next to him, he drifts over to me and we rub shoulders.  Since I have more momentum I continue to pull ahead, and eventually his front wheel touches my back wheel and down he goes.  Luckily there were two police officers working that intersection as well as a couple dozen spectators, so figuring that my stopping would serve no purpose I rode on.

The whole rest of the loop I'm replaying that incident in my head and praying that the guy isn't seriously messed up. I breathe a giant sigh of relief when I ride back through that corner ~15 minutes later and there are no body or bike parts on the ground and no ambulance on the scene. I would've felt like the world's biggest scumbag for riding off had that guy been seriously hurt. I jogged out to that intersection after the race and talked to one of the cops. He said the guy had some road rash, but was otherwise OK, refused any medical attention and left the scene under his own power.  Everything happened so quickly I don't know what else I really could have done, but I still feel pretty shitty for being one half of an encounter that probably ruined someone's day.

I get through transition without any hiccups and head out onto the run course in 4th place, about 20 seconds back of the guy in 3rd.  I manage the first mile in 5:15 this time around and look to be closing the gap a bit to 3rd, but I start to lose ground again as we head down the hill. I develop a wicked side stitch on the way down the hill, which is odd. It's been several years since that has happened.  Did I mention I hate running downhill?  Luckily the side stitch clears up toward the bottom and I try to maintain some type of reasonable form for the last push back up the hill.  By now I'm in pretty rough shape and just ready to be done.  

I enter the finish chute a few steps behind one of the 60+ guys from the first wave.  Deciding that a finish line sprint with a guy who started 15 minutes ahead of me is ridiculous (and truthfully, a little afraid that I wouldn't even win said sprint), I set up shop about 10 yards behind him and cruise the last couple hundred meters, crossing the line in 4th.

When I cross the line I give Patrick (who finished 2nd overall, only a handful of seconds behind a guy who finished 2nd in the pro wave at last years Duathlon Nationals) a high five and and proceed to dry heave over a fence while Patrick is being interviewed.

Since the awards ceremony is at 6PM back at the host hotel we don't stick around long and collect our belongings as soon as the transition area is reopened.  We head back to the hotel and to get cleaned up before a post-race refuel at In-N-Out.

This whole time we're still under the impression that we're 2nd and 4th overall. After returning to the hotel I get on the computer and check to see if the official results are posted.  It turns out that I've been upgraded to 3rd overall since the guy who crossed the line in 3rd managed to somehow accumulate 6 minutes worth of penalties.  And since the overall winner is Canadian, he's not eligible for the US championship (apparently he was racing in a one-man "open" division).  That makes Patrick the US champ and me the runner up!

Minnesota was well represented at the awards ceremony, as not only were Patrick and I on the overall podium and winners of our respective age groups, but Bob Powers and Ben Ewers won their age groups as well.  

So the first race of 2012 is over and done with.  Patrick and I both brought home national championship jerseys and a hell of a lot of stories to tell (although most of them have more to do with the fake bomb scare than the race). I'll take that to kick off the season anytime.

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!