My first year competing I was riding a mountain bike I had picked up used that really was too small. It was a hard tail with 26” wheels, riding it for an extended period of time would leave my back in spasms, I actually had to walk some of the down hills because of the pain! I would end up in 44th place with a 3:14:06. The following year (2011) I came back with a new full suspension Trek Hi-Fi Pro 29er from Walt’s and saw a huge improvement vaulting up to 5th overall with a 2:38:13. This year, while my fitness wasn’t quite what it has been in the past, I had recently cut my handle bars down and felt like I was riding off road much faster as a result. While I didn’t think it was likely my overall time or placing would improve, I felt I could improve a little on the bike course. Since I’ve only been swimming at most twice a week and usually more like once a week swimming 1,000 yards or less when I do, I decided I would hold off on the start and not try to mix it up with the fast guys. As you can see in the picture, I held way back at the swim start!
I think the swim course was long last year and as I came out of the swim this year I knew I was about two or so minutes ahead of my time. However, I had a slow transition but still ended up leaving T1 at about the same time I had been exiting the swim course last year!
Friday evening I took the time to pre-ride the course so I was pretty confident I could handle everything on the course. However, the course was really dry and many of the corners were super slick with loose gravel. Less than a mile in I slid out on one of the corners I had ridden just fine the night before and lost a spot as a result. In the ensuing long climb I ended up passing several cyclists and began to settle into a nice rhythm. Following the long first climb, the course levels out for a while and rides along a ridge before plunging back down and heading back by transition. On the long descent there are several corners and sections with loose gravel. I was taking a bit more of a cautious approach since I’m not really a mountain biker so I ended up getting passed by a group of about 4 guys flying down the mountain. I could only hope that I would pass them back on the run!For the remainder of the bike I think I only got passed one more time and passed about 3 or 4 guys as well. Ended up heading back into T2 less than 1:40:00 into the race, knowing that a five mile trail run was easily under fifty minutes I felt like I had a good chance to go under 2:30:00 or an eight minute improvement from the previous year!
After a quick thirty second transition I was out on the run. I immediately regretted not taking the time to count the returned bikes as I had no idea what position I was running in! I could see two runners with a hundred yards or less ahead of me. My first temptation was to surge and pass them quickly, but instead I told myself to pace myself and pass them in time. The run is brutal and starts with a long and steep hill climb, I walked a lot of it as running wouldn’t have been much faster. Still though, even with the walking I ended up passing both the other runners, neither of them had noticed what position we were in so I just pressed on. Eventually I ran past an aid station where they told me I was in 6th place.
All told, I ended up passing 6 runners on the run and ended up finishing in 6th place overall, first in my age group. While I was one place lower overall than the previous year, the biggest thing for me was the 13 minute improvement on my overall time! Had I been fully trained and ready, a 13 minute improvement might have been expected. However, given that I’ve been training very lightly, I’m really excited to see what I can do when I finally pick things up!
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