Normally I wouldn't send out an update without a big race on the horizon or a result from a big race. I don't want to flood your mailboxes :)



However, I felt this was worthy of sending out to all of you.



This past weekend, the 26th of August, I went out to Iowa on the invitation of my friend to do a race he helped organize and run. The race's name was the Iowa State University Cyman Triathlon. It is a fairly long running race. I didn't really plan much for this race it was done on more of whim and the invitation of friend who had a pull out coach and good camaraderie, so naturally I accepted. I drove over to Ames, Iowa on Saturday in the morning and got there around mid-day. I scouted the race course by simulating the race. I did the 500m swim, the 15.5mi bike, and the 5K run as if it were race day. I felt good.



I then went on to hang out with my pals, which included going to church (that is a whole story in and of itself...let me know if you want to hear it), touring the campus, visiting some of the local coffee hangouts and a local sports bar that allows you to see for miles as it is on the top floor of a 12 story building. We then retired to the apartment to watch Braveheart in full. Coach Fischer would've been proud as I requested to re-watch the big fight scene at the battle of Stirling, just for the pre-battle speech :) As always, it gets you pumped, so we didn't hit the sack until well after 1:30am Sunday...we got up at 4:45am Sunday for the race :)



When race day arrived I drove to the site, picked out my transition site, and went for a 5K run followed by stretch bands for my arms to loosen up. It was at this point that my pal, John, told me that there were two other PRO racers at the race. both of whom have won the race in the past...by a lot. Okay...looks like we'll being going harder than planned.



I was in wave one, the other two PRO racers were in wave two, so I'd have to time trial it as I wouldn't know how close they were to me until after the race, and they'd be able to push off each other.



The swim went well. I got a little shocked when a girl came out of the water right next to me though. Am I getting slower? (No offense to the ladies reading this...I just haven't ever been beat by a gal in swimming that is younger than me...she is 17) No, she was a on a relay team and state champ swimmer, so she collapsed in the transition zone after having her partner go on the bike leg. From this point forward it was just me and the lead motorcycle. I got to follow him for the three laps of the bike were I held a 26.1mph average and entered T2 as people were still exiting the water. I think I confused some volunteers at this point. From that point on it was just me and the old cross-country trail until I hit the finish line, which was at the 1:03:22 mark. Not bad. The next person to cross was at the 1:06:56 mark from my wave. The two PRO racers from wave two had a final time of 1:04:00 and 1:04:36...



I got my first overall race win of the season. The race had roughly 400 athletes in it and it was an extremely well ran race. Nathan, who came in second is a very talented athlete, and made me work extremely hard to win on Sunday.



Thanks again to all of you for the support. I really do appreciate it!



As always, for those new to the list-serve, feel free to puruse my sites at:

http://sponsorhouse.loopd.com/Members/kamnetz/Home.aspx

http://kamnetz.googlepages.com/

Let me start by saying that I don't have official results in my hands yet, so I wont be able to tell you the exact place I got, but I will have a rough idea for you. The race started with 55 racers toeing the start line at 11:45am in 97 degree Colorado high altitude heat. No shade, no breeze. Water temp was a warm 24 degree centigrade (the ITU people are from Canada, so they don't understand Fahrenheit). Most of you know that I was scheduled to begin the race at noon local time, but at Saturday's pre-race meeting we were told it would be 11:00am local time instead. So, that means we all planned for that start time. When it got changed, nobody told the athletes until they were lining up to enter the water. That kid of messed up our warm-ups, but it didn't really faze any of us.



As for the race...



The swim went really well this time around. I took a spot on the start line behind Hunter Kemper and Andy Potts right in the middle and followed them into the water. I held a great position at the front all the way to the first buoy turn (this was roughly 250meters out) where I had a bad turn and got kind of messed up. No problem though, we gt right back into it and clipped on to some feet and swam my arms off. I need stop here and thank those of you that have been going open water swimming with me, as it helped. When I finished the fist lap of the swim I was with the 3rd pack of swimmers. I stayed in this pack all the way through the rest of the swim and came out in a strong place with a good group of people to work the bike with. The lead pack was made up of Andy Potts, Hunter Kemper, Brian Fleischmann, and Tim O'Donnell. The 2nd pack was fairly large, but not too far ahead of us.



My swim to bike transition was going great until my flying mount where I missed the shoe and snubbed my toe into the ground. I recovered quite nicely though and sprinted to catch the pack that I was going with. I got right into the mix of things with about 8 other guys with all of us working together really well at first. Then, people started being stupid to put it mildly. Guys would launch attacks on the group or go onto the front and slow us down on the straights which was getting to be annoying, but it was the least of my worries. Once people started behaving themselves, we were cranking along. My down fall came shortly there after on lap 3 of a 6 lap course. We had a stretch of about 800 meters that had 4 turns mixed into it. While I may be a very powerful, and overall strong cyclist, I still need more work on my handling. These few rapid fire turns caused me to lose contact from the small pack I was in due to my in ability to stick with them at the high speeds they had in the turns. I'm just not experienced enough with that yet...so that is the big thing I need to work on here. I was lucky though. Due to us having the top ranked triathletes in the world with us, a number of athletes got lapped and therefore taken out of the race. I was not one of them. While I had to kill myself to make that happen, I made it through the bike with a time-trial ride over the last 3 laps.



We then moved into the run. I was feeling the heat at this point and took the transition from bike to run a bit slower than I would have liked but knew I needed to put down more fluids and decided a few seconds in T2 was worth the extra hydration. It was odd coming though there and seeing all the lapped racers packing up their stuff though, I will admit that.



As I headed out onto the run I realized that it was going to be a very lonely one. The packs that had ridden together on the bike leg were just far enough ahead of me that I never could quite see them around the turns in the dirt, yes dirt, road. On the first lap of the run I felt pretty awful for the first 2K before finding my rhythm and pumping it after people. I started to really feel the heat once again at around the 7K mark on the run. It hit me pretty hard and I slugged up the rest of the one hill on the course. From there, it was all downhill. By this point a number of people that had managed to make the bike leg dropped out due to the heat. Van de Wyngard (one of the possible 2008 Olympic Contenders for Chile) was among those dropping from the race. A few people were taken out via medical personal in ambulances. My last scary moment of the run was with 800m to go when I all of a sudden began to cramp...there was no stopping now though. I pushed through (I can still feel it a bit in that leg like a dull burning now, 5 hours later) and managed to hit the finish line in 34th or 35th place (again, no results yet so I can't tell for sure) and 6th or 7th in the U23 division as the youngest athlete at the race.



All in all it was a better experience than Geneva was, though I am still far from where I would like to be. I could blame it on the altitude or the heat or anything else, but to be honest I just need more time in the pool still and some good old fashioned technique work on the bike to better hit those corners.



What that means is my next big race is November 10th in San Fran (I am no longer doing Clearwater 70.3 Worlds anymore as I want to focus on the Olympic Distance), but I will most likely throw in some non-drafting races here and there for high effort workouts and transition practice. I will also be doing any cycling race I can find in the area to improve those handling skills. I'll keep you all updated here via e-mail on on my blog at http://www.sponsorhouse.com/Members/kamnetz/Home.aspx and http://kamnetz.googlepages.com/ as well.



I send out an e-mail tomorrow with the official finishing place for you all to see.



Rock-on!

Well, my second ITU Pan American Cup race is now less than 5 days away. I made it out to Colorado safely and am staying with the Patch family who are close family friends. I got here to Denver yesterday morning and was able to get into a pool shortly there after. I can tell that the air is thinner here, but it isn't affecting me as badly as I had thought it would. I plan to go for a run here later today and then take another trip over to the pool and see how that goes.

As for what he race looks like, it is going to be very fast again, just like it was in Geneva. While last time we had former Olympians, this time we also have the top ranked (as in top 6) Americans who also happen to be in the top 50 in the world (including for those following the sport in general, Kemper, Potts, Jarrod S., etc). The quality of field is going to be a real treat. I had said that I wanted to prove my worth in this race, and with this kind of competition, I am sure going to get my chance. I feel good, and I feel fit. It should be a fun time with a great performance from me as well.

On an unrelated note, the summer swim season just recently ended back in Madison with the All-City swim meet (which was much more draining than I had anticipated) where my 13-14 boys and girls won the title. I had a lot of fun coaching all the groups I worked with this summer. It was more enjoyable than I could have ever expected, and I already miss it.

Anyways, I'll shoot you all an update on Sunday after the race or Monday morning after I get my feet back underneath me.

Take care!