Sunday 22nd 2012 I competed in the Spring Fling triathlon held in Rio Rancho New Mexico. The race director was Mark Mico of Tri Sport coaching. He’s an AMAZING race director! His races are always organized, have plenty of volunteers, is well marked, the award ceremony is always held promptly, the times are always accurate, and his races have the best plaques I’ve ever seen for a sprint distance race.
I wasn’t expecting to be very competitive today. I’ve gained 10 pounds in the last two weeks, I’d trained hard all week including a 35 mile bike on Friday and an hour long run 16 hours before the race started, but I ended up having a pretty good day.
I finished the 400 meter swim in a surprising time of 6 minutes 35 seconds. I was happy with my swim time because I haven’t been swimming at all since summer 2011.
My 1st transition was horrible. I raced with a new helmet and I forgot to practice putting it on and off quickly so I lost a good 10 seconds.
I knew I was going to struggle on the bike. I’ve only been able to get in one ride a week outdoors since my wife and kids started school last Aug. The bike was a gut check. I was suffering. I hadn’t hurt on a bikethat bad in a long time. Matt Hall, a fellow competitor who has been racing with me regularly for a couple years and is in my age group passed me on bike. That was the 1st time he’d had a faster bike split than me. Today he wasn’t just a little faster than me, he passed me like he was Lance Armstrong! I finished the 15.5 mile bike in 49 minutes 13 seconds, keeping aprox a 19.9 mph average.
I had a screaming fast 2nd transition, I made up almost half the time on Matt that I’d lost on the bike.
I had a much faster run than I was expecting. I was able to catch Matt about 3/4 of a mile from the transition area, but he picked up the pace when he saw me. We ran side by side for a half mile. I pushed myself hard during the run finishing the 3.2 mile run in 25 minutes even which is a 8 min 2 second per mile average.
I ended up finishing 2nd place in my age group of thirteen 35-39 age group men, and 20th place out of 159 athletes total. I finished high enough in my AG to earn a qualifying spot to the 2012 National triathlon championships. This is the 2nd time in the last 3 races I've qualified. Not bad considering I'm only training for long course triathlons rather than short course right now.
I pulled my left quad during the race. I'm hoping my quad will heal up by the Atomicman duathlon next week. I love the Atomicman duathlon. It's my favorite race of all time. I always try to have a great showing there, but if my quad is still bothering me I may have to just ride and run it nice and easy. A slow finish is always better than a DNF or a DBS! I cant be having no DNS's! That would be unacceptable.
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