Ashland triathlon / flight to Dallas

Today was the Ashland/Metro West triathlon... 400 + people, and my first olympic distance this year. Amy, Mary, Dean, Rich, Mandy, Sara, Dave, and a team of Paul, Doug, and Rich also raced. The support is so awesome, I am so blessed to have gotten involved with the team. After the swim episode in Ludlow I had some reservations for this race. Suck it up was the only thing to do. My wave (40-44) was the last to go 4 minutes behind the women, and 8 minutes behind 45-49 men. In the elite wave (first to go) there was 1 poor guy who cracked before he got to the first turn, man I can feel that... Looking up times later he pulled a 50 minute swim (ouch!) but smoked the bike and I beat him on the run.... maybe a pro biker that was forced to race elite??? Anywho....

The swim went off without a hitch, I found my pace, sighting was perfect, passed people pretty consistently and came out of the water with a 31:34, which about 4 minutes faster than my training swims. Felt strong, my original goal was just to get my feet on the sand. The transition area was a 1/2 mile from the swim finish (no kidding) up through a muddy trail with roots etc. I knew this from last year so brought a spare pair of running shoes to make the trek. T1 was 7:39 and off on the bike.

This course is 2 13.3 mile loops with a lot of rollers and 2 climbs to get out of the saddle on. the thing about it is that it's hard keep it in a gear and get groovin', seems like its a constant gear here, gear there. The 2 climbs are small ringers. Only passed on the bike by 2 people (1 reeled back in), the first an eliter (Pat Wheeler, cool guy, races for fastsplits) and the other a 140 pounder in the 45-49 age group that I've seen around at races before. He started 8 minutes before me in the swim, not sure where I made up the time but once we hit the rollers I'd power past him, on the climbs he'd just deet-deet-deet by me damnit!! We ended up rolling into T2 together, my time was 1:18:52 @ 20.3 MPH which is a little slow for me. There was a boston market feed after the race and we caught up and talked a while, seems like a nice guy.

The Ashland run is hellacious, the only way I can put it. It's an 6.8 mile lollipop course with uphill start followed by a down, then a bunch of rolling choppers in the loop. It does have a downhill finish which is nice... you can at least look strong going across the line. These last 2 years it's been in the low 90's on the run. I started to cramp in the quads right above the knees at about mile 4. I was surprised as I had 2.5 bottles of heed on the bike and loaded with electrolytes prior to the race. Could be that I sweat them all out... my eyes were super salt crusted after the race. Had to back down on the uphills, legs could not take it. Was able give it more juice on the flats & downs. 58:44 on the run @ 8:45 mm. I did the run as a relay last year and finished about 1 min faster this year which made me feel pretty good. Total race time was 2:56:48. HR averages -- Swim-154, Bike-168, Run - 177 for an average of 170 for the entire race. It's all good! 1 more olympic distance, then Timberman 70.3...

Got home as quick as I could to spend time with the kids on fathers day, then had to head to Dallas for the week.