No Race Day Magic

Though I was training right through this olympic distance race, I was hopeful that maybe some race day magic would happen. But from the gun, I knew otherwise. This being a "grassroots" race, there had to be "grassroots" issues: like the first wave getting sucked out to the Golden Gate bridge because the race director wasn't aware of the strong currents in the bay. He decided to give it another shot and sent the second wave off and same result. It looked like the Coast Guard had a fun day out there. I was glad to have my teammates entertain me as we watched the madness and waited and waited. Finally, after a thirty minute delay, the race director decided to send the rest of the waves in the opposite direction. Now, you had two groups swimming in opposite directions at the same time on the swim course-am very glad that I have a swimming background. But it seemed like most of the competitors kept a good sense-of-humor throughout.

Back to the race, thirty minute wait led to burning arms and legs due to not re-warming up for the swim. I used the first lap as a warm up and the second to race. Then it was a long run to T1, they say 3/4 mile, I say a mile plus, but still fun. The bike was 6 laps of: 1 mile up, 1 mile down, 1 mile up, 1 mile down. I can't think of a course better suited to KILL me. I really regretted not mastering spinning with Maria last week. With each lap, I lost more and more power (and time) as I tried to crank it up the short climbs with my 50 rpm's. Onto the run, my hammies were tight and dead from those 50 rpm's of riding. The first two miles were spent lamenting where that speed I had supposedly picked up last weekend while training with Ian and Charisa. The third mile was spent fighting off a bonk because I still had not taken a gel due to lack of an aid station (remember grassroots). Finally, at the turn around and aid station and a gel. I came back to life and slowly the speed started to surface. With one mile remaining a young lad, only on this earth for 24 years, comes up on me. Oh how his young legs turned over. We hit this steep downhill section and I told myself, though he is young, I'm ballsy! I leaned forward and let it ripped, passing the more cautious youngin'. Then we hit this downhill section with 100+ steps. Once again, more ballsy. I think my midget sized legs took 4-5 steps at at time, and I built a 200+ yard lead and kept it until the finish. Yeah for midget-sized ballsy people.