It's amazing that something so small can have such a large impact in a race. Whether it is a tiny gravel you get in your shoe as you are trying to put them on in transition, dropping your water bottle during the bike section thus leaving you dehydrated for the rest of your race, or in my case this past weekend at the Ramseur Lake Triathlon using an anti-fog solution I had leftover in my swim bag that I already knew didn't work that well! No matter what the distraction you face during your event it can have a huge impact on your entire race and may even end it but it's what you do when you are faced with these situations that determine your ending.
The weekend started off great. I hooked up with Mike Dalsey via some Facebook planning and headed down south for the evening. Along the way I got some pointers on how to approach swimming and open water swims from a guy that has been in the water his whole life. We had a great evening and I was feeling a lot better about doing my longest single swim and only my third open water swim.
The morning of the race, I woke up and was excited to finally get to represent my Runwell Ambassadorship with the new gear by Champion System which fit perfectly! Mike and I made our way to the course, set up our transitions, and I got a good warm up as I mentally prepared myself for the upcoming swim. After my warm-up, I grabbed some water, popped a few of my Energybits and then got my wet-suit on and headed to the water. As I got in the water and put my goggles on they immediately started fogging up! I then began trying frantically to keep them from fogging to no avail, then the horn sounded and I was off swimming... blind. Needles to say this was not working so I stopped a few times to get some water in the goggles to wash out the fog but it just kept happening. I decided to take the goggles off, flip over and backstroke which worked well but now my contacts were getting wet and sticking! I proceeded to zig-zag on my back with sticky contacts the rest of the first lap and as I started in on the second I stopped to sight and caught a glimpse of the front group, including Mike, heading for shore. I struggled through the last lap doing any combination of a super slow breast stroke and a sad heads up freestyle to keep my contacts dry and when I finally made it to shore I was tempted to kiss the ground!
Now I am finally ready to race... but coming out of the water 20+ minutes behind the leaders I knew I had no chance of making a top three finish so I decided to grind it out and see if I could at least claw my way back in to the top ten. My T1 transition was fast and I was up to speed on the bike in no time feeling great in spite of my double effort swim. It was a dark overcast day, but the yellow lenses in my new XX2i France 1 Pro glasses helped brighten things up and my mood! I was passing people like crazy which was both fun and motivating so I kept at it on a course that was rolling and beautiful. Maybe it was the tailwind or just the number of people I passed, but the bike leg seemed to be over in no time and as I took the right turn heading back in to transition I was wondering where I stood in the overall. I quickly unbuckled my shoes, jumped off the bike and ran to get started with T2 asking the official if he knew how many were in front of me. He started counting bikes and as I ran out to start the run he yelled that it looked like sixteen ahead of me so I turned on the burners in hot pursuit of at least six people. At about mile two I had passed several people and finally got another glimpse of Mike. I was glad to see him and was hoping he was still near the top finishers and as I ran Cameron Chappell, my partner in crime in the spring Triad Duathlon Series, cheered me on. I caught as many people as I could during the first lap and then starting my second lap of the run course it became harder to know who was on the same lap as me until I started back towards the finish line. With two miles to go, it was clear I would catch no one else so I turned down the pace and cruised in to the finish line.
After it was all said and done, I ended up 7th Overall and 1st in my Age Group so I was happy with the result considering the sadly entertaining swim leg but man was I glad to get that race over with! Mike ended up 4th Overall and 1st in his Age Group so it was a great day for us and two others (John Harding and Lisa Dulong) from the Roanoke Valley. Rich Swor of Trivium Racing did an awesome job hosting this event and if you haven't done one of his races you should. He and his team work really hard to put on the best race possible and I am even looking forward to running in the Triad Ten Miler this coming weekend. Especially since there is no swimming involved!
No comments:
Post a Comment