Ramblings of a racing addict

More like brutal Alabama… Yesterdays XTERRA was tough. Temps in the mid 90’s farenheit, with high humidity making it feel like 100. Even the swim, normally kinda refreshing was uncomfortable. The lake water was measured at over 80 farenheit at 8am.

Warming up wasn’t something you needed to do. simply setting up transition was enough to get a sweat on.

Long story short, I managed to put together a pretty solid race. end result was 11th in pro, 20 sec or so out of the top 10. And while 11th was what I got last year, this was a much better quality 11th!

 In all three disciplines I was faster than last year, and finished approximately 10min down on winner stoltz, which on this course, showed huge improvements.

I was pleased to swim a couple of minutes faster than last year, so headed onto the bike with confidence. The first 25min was frustrating as its all singletrack and unlike last weeks MTB race…. fast swimmers in the way (as oppossed to fast MTB’ers) make things a bit difficult. Eventually I caught up to Ryan Ignatz, one of the faster XTERRA MTB’ers and we rode solid together throughout the ride, steadily picking up spots. Quick enough that it wasn’t until the last km that B’Man Smith caught us.

Heading out onto the run in about 15th with Ignatz and Smith (XTERRAs fastest runner) I thought things were good. But I soon struggled on the brutal undulating run whose 6+ climbs in the last 5km pack in about 1800ft of elevation gain. In the heat I felt I was creeping. Turns out plenty of others were too. I soon lost sight of BMan and Ryan who ran up to 6th/8th…. but made my way steadily forward to finish strong and post an 11th.

I was promptly ushered to the mist tent which looked like a warzone with the first 10 all sprawled out either on IV’s, under ice, or simply lying under the sprinklers. Alabama kicked everyones arse!

I am pretty encouraged by my form though and can’t wait for Richmond which suits me even more.

And Nic? She put in a bloody gutsy performance for 10th women overall. She picked up a nasty bug last week and on saturday was really struggling. I wasn’t sure racing was a smart thing to do but shes paid a lot of $ to get here and was determined to compete. After all she’s here to learn, and competing under such adversity has gotta to teach you something?! So to come through that strongly was impressive. Onwards and upwards from here!