St. Peter's Rec-Plex (Spring) 2012

St. Peter's Rec-Plex (Spring) 2012

Lets just say that my pre-race routine was sub-optimal. I have been spending the night with Emily in the hospital since her kidney transplant (including the night before the race). I can sleep just about anywhere, so the expandable couch wasn't a real problem. However, getting woken up frequently with nurse visits and IV alarms going off needing a refill, and othe such things only allowed for short durations of actual sleep. On top of that, race morning was the completion of my meds for getting through my pnemonia. The effects from that don't have me at 100% either. Despite that, I'm actually in good spirits and have high hopes for the race.

I have a pretty early start time which is great because the heat is likely to pick up right about the time that I will be getting ready to come in to the finish. The swim started my race off fine. It was right about the time I was looking to come in at. Transition to the bike went fine, but I think I could get a few seconds here if I really wanted to work on it. I was actually battling to get out of transition with a rider and were practically running into eachother for position.

That battle continued as he and I went back and forth passing eachother over and over again through the bike. Based on the race number, I had started 2 minutes ahead, so I needed to get that back to really beat him. By the end of the bike course, I had held for a while and was no longer getting passed. I tried to do a quick glance back and actually couldn't see him. I thought I'd finally broken him on the bike. I quickly came into transition and was starting on my way out on the run, when I got a suprise. There was that guy and his number... in front of me. I was confused by this as I thought I dropped him on the bike and didn't take a long transition at all.

He started the run fast and I pushed my pace just a bit, but knew he was going out harder than I could maintain. My goal was to hold my pace and see how things progressed through the race. I was hopeful to get a big second wind to catch him, but even then I really needed two minutes more than just to catch up. I held him just out in front of me for the first two miles and then I had a bit of luck on my side. My battling foe was cramping up and I made up the gap pretty quickly. There was enough time left in the run to make up the other two minutes, so I pushed it with every last bit of energy that I had. I felt like I had a good pace going, but two minutes might be too much to ask for.

I finished in 1:35:44 for the 500m swim, 21 mile bike, and 4.4 mile run. A fantastic time! I started my watch as soon as I crossed and waited to see if I had done enough to get my two minutes. 1:00.... 1:30... 1:45... oh no, here he comes... and finishes just under the two minutes by a couple seconds. I was slightly saddened by this, but knew that I had put in a good day and didn't leave anything out on the course. Someone in the crown at the finish heard me talking about this and came up to me to let me know, I had been battling his TEAM and not an individual. I had battled one guy on the bike and a fresh one on the run. That also explains the fast transitions. It was really the female in the swim that made up the time at the start who had beaten me. The results started being posted and that's when I realized I hadn't lost to them at all! I only needed 1:45 and had beaten them by 15 seconds (the 3rd place team). I was 6th overall and 1st in my age group. My best finish here and a complete success! Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for the awards as I wanted to get back to Emily at the hospital, but a good friend, Brent Newman, picked up my award and prizes for me.