BAM + Boulder Stroke and Stride and Colorado Train...
Wow, two races in three days…that gives me a ton to talk about. Not to mention the fact that I am training in Colorado, so that leaves for some stories itself too!
I'll start with the Boulder Stroke and Stride that took place on Thursday the 12th of June.
I was warned that the water would be cold, but I wasn't ready for how cold it really was. It was the cold that makes your feet and hands go numb after about 20sec of being in the water. However, on the bright side, that meant you couldn't feel how cold they were. The real problem was when you hit the water with your face to swim. A stinging cold on your face for 20min of swimming is anything but fun. That said I had the 8th fastest swim on the day in a race of 140 athletes. I also ended up with the 9th fastest run on the day for a final place of 8th overall. That's not too bad considering the team went up with the single goal of getting loose for Saturday's race in Utah. I must say, even with freezing water, it was a really enjoyable event. I didn't expect to see that many people show and pay $20 just to do a swim and run on a Thursday night.
The next morning we were up at 4:30 and on the road before 5am on our way to Midway, Utah. The drive took a little over 8.5hrs in total with the couple gas stops we needed. When you are driving in three oversized SUVs through the mountains, you ended up using up a ton of gas quickly. The drive was worth it though. The scenery at this venue was spectacular. There were snow capped mountains all around us and huge open valleys that we raced in. The hotel we stayed at was great as well. It just happened to be the premier ski resort hotel in the area. After seeing the course and setting up transition, we headed to bed as the next morning was to be early yet again.
We were up and into the car for the drive over to transition by 4:30am…we woke up at 4am in order to make that happen. We had to be there early as T1 and T2 were in separate areas, so we needed to take a shuttle from T2 to T1 in the morning. This was a pain in the ass as they only had two busses making the 5mi drive and they wouldn't leave until it was completely full…so you ended up waiting forever and in the end, I ended up with very little warm-up time.
Now, I said the water in Boulder was cold…well, the water here made that swim look warm. I am not sure how we were able to swim in it, but we made it happen. It makes me think of Reno, NV where I did my first multi-sport race and they canceled the swim…the water in both cases was the same temperature. Yet, it seems that these cold swims do me well as I came out near the tail end of the lead pack. There was one problem though: I couldn't feel my hands or feet at all. My quads and hamstrings were just as numb. It was the oddest and most uncomfortable sensation I ever had short of Mexico, and I wasn't even done yet.
The numbness made it ridiculously hard to get my shoes on or shift gears for the bike. In fact, I almost lost one of my cycling shoes due to not being able to make my feet do what I wanted them to. But, the worst was about to come. At about the 3mi mark on the bike a USAT Official came up next to me and told me to "Stand-Down", which means stop. He proceeded to tell me I was in violation of the stagger rule. This is a rule that applies ONLY to PRO athletes in non-drafting races. I have included some diagrams to show you what this rule is. Diagram A is violation of the rule, while Diagram B is not. The rule states that if you can see the person immediately in front of you, you can not place yourself directly behind that person, no matter how far ahead of you they are. So, this would result in the athletes being staged as shown in Diagram B…he said I was doing what was shown in Diagram B, and that it was illegal. If that were true though, you would need to ride as shown in Diagram C…that would become impossible after about 10 athletes ended up on the road as the road would never be wide enough to hold every athlete.
Anyways, that meant I would need to stand there for a two-minute time period. I tried to tell him that he was enforcing the rule incorrectly, but this resulted in me being issued yet another 2min penalty for arguing. Apparently I needed to have both feet on the ground, not just one. He told me this after about 30-45sec, and said since both feet were not on the ground, he had not started the timer. This wouldn't be the end of my troubles on the bike though.
At around the 15mi mark, a volunteer, well, a police officer to be exact, directed me to go left down a road. Roughly 3min later the same officer drove up next me and shouted that he had told me to go the wrong way and I should turn around now. Ouch.
By this point I was pretty demoralized and very ticked off. When I finally got to T2 I was near the very back of the PRO field, yet my feet and hands were still numb, so it took me forever, or what seemed forever to get my running shoes on. Once that was done, I took off for the run course, only to come to a fork in the road, with two other athletes. It was un-marked as to which way we needed to go. We basically chanced it after asking each other if anyone knew the way. It was, luckily, the correct way.
I ended up finishing in 25th overall after it was all said and done, about 20min back from the leader, and about 12min out of the money. That hurt to se those numbers. Still, I found out that other people had tons of trouble finding the right path on the run and lots of people had gone off course. It was a run in these foot hills…think high school cross-country through slightly mowed grass and dirt paths. Had it not been for the amazing views, this would have made it to the number 1 spot on my list of worst planned races.
To add to the whole weekend of fiascos, I ended up with a speeding ticket for going 9mph over the speed limit on the interstate while driving home…9mph? I thought the cops were bad in my home town, but they have nothing on the Wyoming police. We finally got home just before 10pm on Saturday night, making it one long, long day.
I did make up for it all with one of the most amazing rides I have ever been on. Today, I went out and did what is known as the Peak to Peak ride. It is an intense mountain ride of a little over 80mi in total. It took a good solid 5 hours to do, with the vast majority of time spent climbing as the descents were an average speed of 45mph with a max speed of a little over 66mph, while the climbs up saw average speeds of about 10mph. Check my website for some pictures I managed to snap along the way.
All in all, it was quite the weekend, and with one more day here in Colorado before I head to California for the next five weeks, who knows what could happen.
I'll be sending out another update sometime after the 22nd, at which point I'll be completely settled into my place in California. But, so you all have an idea of what I'll be up to the rest of this summer…
June 17th until July 24th will find me in California doing a marketing internship for Zoot Sports (www.zootsports.com) and racing in a number of local cycling and running races.
On July 20th I'll be in northern California for the Vineman 70.3 Triathlon (This is a half-Ironman distance race).
On the 24th of July I'll head to Wales, the United Kingdom, to race in a triathlon that British Triathlon Federation has invited me to race at. They will be covering all expenses.
I will return on the 27th of July to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to attend an invite only training camp.
I will return home from the Olympic Training Center on August 6th to Madison.
Talk to you all again soon. Stay in touch, and stay well!