Xterra World Champs - TriathlonOther

No age group ranks, but I did start the day out right with a good swim. I did make sure to get in my laps, and I seem to be able to understand how to navigate while out in the open water. After the first turn I noticed the pack was going the wrong way.. heading towards the exit of the second lap instead of the yellow buoy about 20 degrees to the left. I was one of the few people that strayed from the pack and made a more direct course for the beach turn around.
I'm always confused during swims how certain people can get ahead of me.. I always seem to get caught up behind the zig-zagging swimmer. How did that person get in front of me in the first place? but I digress.. During the second lap I did make an effort to catch someone's feet from the wave after me. I was able to catch some feet for most of the return swim to shore, but I eventually did lose her as we got closer in to the finish. After the rough surf at practice, I learned to take it easy and gauge the waves behind me before coming in to shore. Look back when breathing and you can see the swells behind you, and if a big group is coming, stop and face them so you don't get crushed.

Considering my training(lack of) and inexperience in rough water.. nothing. If I had been swimming more, maybe I could have had a more aggressive plan, but I did this one almost perfectly considering the overall plan I had for the day.

Not much of a great T1.. but I purposefully took this one slow.

This bike had got a LOT of climbing, >3000 feet in the whole thing. That's a super load of climbing when considering the bike is less than 20 miles long. During the first portion of the bike I just kept myself on a serious rev limiter. I wasn't going to try and be a hero since I hadn't had many rides over 2 hours in the lasts 2 months. The plan was working perfectly until I took a decent spill after I was almost all the way down the mountain. Fell down pretty hard, but landed it correctly in order to keep myself from getting hurt and only got some minor scrapes(too bad my bike got more than that). My rear brake master cylinder broke off of my handlebar so I had to finish the bike with just my front brake and no rear. Luckily I was already most of the way down the mountain so it wasn't so bad except for the sandy sections towards the end. I did take a little spill during one of those deep sand pits as I didn't modulate my front brake well enough to keep it from locking up.

Ride more in the months leading up to the race. Because I hadn't been riding like I should have I don't think my body was used to eating/drinking much on the bike. I wasn't able to eat much and I was forced to switch to water only after about the half-way point. I ditched my camelback podium bottle at one of the bottle drops and got some more water, but I would later pay the price on the run.

Not a bad T2, once again kept it pretty easy since I knew the run ahead would be close to or more than an hour

I probably drank too much on the bike, as I had liquid sloshing around in my stomach for the run. I walked most of the big hills taking a very laid-back approach to the run. I think my legs had enough power in them to keep climbing, but my HR was not going to cooperate. I didn't want to to fall bad during the run back down the mountain so I ended up walking a lot more than I had originally planned. I did get convinced by some of the spectators to keep running up a few of the sections, but soon after those I would get a bit light-headed and tingly as if I was started to get dehydrated.
I was able to run down at a fairly nice clip, passing several people who didn't have shoes with nice lugs on them like my Inov-8 roclites, but I got passed by several more as I walked many of the climbs. Thankfully there were at least 6 aid stations so I doused myself at every one of them.

Train MORE... My training the last few moths has been haphazard at best.. but there were more important things going on and I didn't do bad considering.

Draped myself with the cool down, cleaned myself off and ate the provided grub. After gathering my stuff I rode back to our villa.


The whole house search during the last few months leading up to the race, then after the search was over we had to put in a lot of effort to get the condo ready for renting out. The one sport I didn't really skip out on was the swimming and I'm glad I at least kept that up as it made the rest of my race easier to manage coming out of the water feeling pretty good. How I did despite the really low weekly totals since coming back from Argentina was a testament to the excellent winter I had leading up to this season.


Definitely one of the best post-race activities of any of the races I've done. I do feel a bit sorry for the slower people as they started breaking down the food/drink stations before everyone had finished, but I think that had to do with the agreement with the Ritz.