XTERRA East Championships - TriathlonOlympic

I say I did good in the swim, well yes and no. I swam decently fast enough for my abilities, but my HR was in the 160's, which kind of set the tone for the rest of the race. The navigation in the muddy water is a bit tricky and started playing mind games with me even though I was never close to missing a buoy and swam the course about as good as I could expect.

Hold back more. I kept telling myself at the start, slow, slow, slow.. but apparently it wasn't slow enough. The run to T1, my HR was about 171, which is close to my run LT.. bad, bad, bad.

Getting in to my gloves slowed me down a bit.. I know some guys ride without gloves, but I'm not sure it's a great idea now. I need to get T1 down to about a minute.

Practice T1 more, get a different pair of gloves

Hard to say how I did on this one.. I fell more than normal, I didn't drink as much fluids as I should, but I still did a lot better than last year. This year there were people stopped at just about every single technical feature out on that course and it was annoying! Wow, learn to ride a mountain bike before you get in a mountain bike race.

drink more gatorade/fluids while on the bike, towards the end my bike handling skills dropped way off and I thought something was going off on my bike. I think it was just me.. but next time I race richmond, I'm going to give my tires a few more psi than normal, something about those trails that make my tires squirly when I run lower psi making it feel like my hubs are loose, or my QR skewers are open.

Good all the way through.. getting out of my buckles was kind of a pain though.

I need shoes that don't have buckles so they're easier to get out of, I also cost myself a few seconds, while I was second guessing myself and double checked to see if I was forgetting something.

While I was meeting or exceeding my goal times up to the run, I thought I was going to have a 2:35 all wrapped up, but things started crashing down on me. During my most recent brick it was easy enough to get my HR down to about 150 and run at a pretty strong pace.. during this run it was all I could do to get my HR down to 165 and I still felt like I was plodding along. I knew I wanted to keep some energy in the tank for the railway trestle climb up the mayan ruins, but I just could not get my HR down. I did eventually get up and over the near vertical climb, but after that (I walked afterwards) I could keep my HR in check, I just had no power and my stomach was cramping and I felt like my cheerios were going to come up. From that point on I walked the climbs and jogged the rest. I drank gatorade and doused my head at the next two aid stations and things start to slowly come back. By the time I reached the top of Belle Isle I told myself there's only 1.5 miles left or so, ignore the HR and just run. Well luckily that was when my stomach issues were over and I was able to pick up the pace considerably and I passed a few people on to the finish.

Drink more leading up to the run! the water I had at the first few stations did not do it for me though, so I think I needed more gatorade because of the heat. I was battling with myself on the drive home on whether or not I just needed a dose of HTFU, or if I really was about to crash and burn (which is why I walked), but considering how i felt after the gatorade at the aid stations leads me to believe that I poorly executed my bike nutrition, along with coming home to find 32 oz still left in my 50 oz camelback.

walked around and promptly went to the spray tent to cool off.. it was HOT!!!! out there.. people don't know about the humidity here since it isn't the deep south, but it was crazy hot out there today. I also put ice cubes in my hat and kept rubbing them on my head.


Taking three weeks off, 6 weeks before a big race? haha, but I was getting married and out on my honeymoon, then got sick. Considering the time off and the poor hydration/nutrition on the bike, and going too hard on the swim I did pretty darn good.


I'm spoiled with some of my local races, but once again.. can the racers get some food when they're done? Food, not snacks, but substantial food. I left the race before the awards ceremony as I was about to crash hard and needed to get some food in my belly.