Angills Can Fly

Well Race fans, this one was much more enjoyable than Pleasant Prairie. I didn’t really have any more time to prepare than I did for the last race but this time I made time. I put in approx 130 miles of riding and around 20 miles of running in since last weekened, and I felt great today. Got up at 3:30 ate my breakfast of 1 bananna and a bowl of Total with 1 cup of coffee. Made  up a bottle of gatorade to drink on the way to the race but didn’t end up drinking it. This was a very disorganized event I would have to say; the course talks left people not understanding anything. The swim courses were very poorly marked so even up until we were about to start people were asking me “do you understand where we are supposed to go?”. I was also very confused by the transition in grass. None the less I picked my spot very wisely as the back 1/2 of transition had to run through a middle isle, then away from the exit, then loop back to get out, wheras my spot was on solid grass about about 20 yards from “the” exit (bike and run exit were the same). 
      I went out with wave 18 which doesn’t even make sense for a race with 565 people but it was also a confusing walk across the matts… out to a start point in the water *shrug*. I was the only person to go all the way to the first turn bouy in my wave which on some level is annoying but on the other hand is why I love endurance sports, because it doesn’t really matter what anyone does… you are competing against yourself. Although in my opinion, if you put in the time and effort to train… to test yourself… why would you want to cheat, and cut a corner or take a shortcut? That nullifies the entire glory of achiving a goal. I don’t know that is just my $.02. so the swim was over in the blink of an eye, T1 went very smoothly, I had my shoes pre-clipped for the barefoot mount which worked out perfectly. Unlike practice though I rode for a few minutes with the straps open as I figured it would be better to loosen up and get comfortable on the bike before reaching down to close straps rather than reaching down and falling over. I definately had spectators taking notice of my not so unique but uncommon in shorter race technique both on and off the bike. “Look at that, he left his shoes clipped in after he gets off the bike…”.
     The bike was absolutely beautiful, but extremely challenging. Hills on top of hills, I fluttered through gears every 2 mins or so it felt like. My claim to fame on this ride is my current speed record of 39.1 mph – Considering the hills, I would say 19.6 avg speed is also quite commendable. There were alot of people who went down on the bike portion this race. There were alot of turns, and 2 railroad crossings, I saw 1 person down on both tracks and then on one of the turns I saw about 5 people go down; I held strong though and was also very proud to be passinng people on the bike 6 waves ahead of me (in the 1400 group I was passing people in the 900′s). I even had someone comment after the race that they recognized me by my tattoos on my calves as I blasted past them on the bike and they knew I was going to have a good race.
     T2 was very fast, ran in, slipped on socks and shoes, put on the race belt, took a gulp of water and I was on my way. I carried a Honey Gel out of T2 onto the run with me and ate it as soon as I got away from transition, and i’m very glad I did. this race has a reputation for what they call the “Killer Hill” ; during the course talk they joked about having a  physcologist at the top to ask why the hell we all feel the need to do this race. They also said that they encourage all racers to walk up the hill… I slowed to a walk once on one of the steeper parts, got my heart rate down a bit then went back to the running climb. According to the Garmin the elevation change was 1,984 ft. I finished the run strong, still had gas in the tank… they gave out water, no bagels, banannas or antyhing. I will go back to do this course next year to see if I can beat my time, I finished 106th out of 565 people, average time from the results page was 1:43:31 and I did it in 1:30 so I’m satisfied with that.

Final: 1:30:35 Swim:7:31 T1:1:54 Bike:50:51 T2:1:46 Run: 28:34

Edit: I have recieved 2 rather harsh comments from other racers about my saying that they did not have bagels or banannas… apparently they were offered in the gazeebo near the finish line. I stand corrected on my previous statement, my loss  However… it does justify what I said about being disorganized because my wife who had been standing at the finish line made comment about the lack of snacks, and there were certainly no racers around me eating after the race. With that being said I also would like to reiterate that I loved this race.. it would seem that 1 reader felt that I was complaining about the race and therefore the need to defend it. I would have thought my wanting to go back next year would have made that clear, but on the flip side… how awesome is it that I have a public audience to this blog?! i just started it to keep record for family and friends be able to follow what I’m doing!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 9:14 amand is filed under Races. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.